I wouldn’t blame it solely on Emirates, just as the US controllers shouldn’t be singled out here.
Emirates is a huge airline, with most probably the biggest network, therefore exposing the industry wide flaws more rapidly.
1. Pilot quality: With the increased demand for pilots in an ever shorter period and the reducing of funds for training and renumeration for them, due to the erosion of ticket prices, it was only a matter of time until the problem of quality arises. The industry tried to mitigate this with increasing automation and a huge array of sops and technical by heart items to replace the good old thorough common sense, training and experience. The latter was always a base to deal with all kinds of situations, even with new ones, as extrapolation and improvisation were possible drawing from it. This is no longer possible with the earlier, as the stereotypical application of Pavlovs dog/sop behaviour needs a recognised condition. The startle effect is a well known fact in aviation that leads to temporary loss of situational awareness. In such a state there is no recognised condition and thus no trained reaction or applicable sop can be triggered.
2. Automation quality: There is no question about the benefits of automation. The autopilot, flight management systems, ground proximity warnings and other protections are great achievements. As with a lot of good things, humans tend to go too far, especially when profits can be increased. The manufacturers lured the airlines into buying their supermodels by promising to save on pilot training through automated protections. But such protections are only as good as their programming and you can hardly program every eventuality. Plus, would you believe it: Even engineers are fallible!!
3. At this point the ugly hypocrisy of today’s industry, and as an accomplice the regulator, arises: Our books recognise that such failures can happen and simply states, that in such situations the pilot (from point 1!) shall take over. A classic catch 22 situation. (look at the MAX disaster)
4. I would like to add another contributing effect: The differences between manufacturer philosophies. Due to rapidly changing numbers of different models in many fleets, pilots get quickly shifted from one model to another at many airlines, incl. EK. Considering points 1 and 2, one can imagine that too big a difference of operations and sops can greatly enhance the problems. Two accidents (B777 in DXB and SFO) reflects this: Pilots trained and long working on Airbus, transitioned to Boeing and in their early line phase screwed up due to huge differences in autothrust/throttle systems.
The remedy to this situation is as obvious as the reluctance to acknowledge it. We will have to live with the regular incident reports that point bluntly to the above.