Originally Posted by
Consol
How different can two types of levers be? The flap and condition levers look and actuate in completely different ways. As an airline pilot you are meant to know what each do. It is impossible to train for complete human irrationally.
Propeller levers are traditionally sharp ridges, with the flap lever an airfoil shape, the ATR has flattened the ridges to just some rolled edges, and the locking mechanism looks like a natural movement to lift the buttons and move the props rearward. IF you put your hand on the rolled forward part of the lever it could almost feel like the curved forward part of the flap lever wing shape, not the sharp points of a prop lever. Also in most other cases the detent from flight operating to feather requires to lift the unit which can be clunky, especially getting two levers through the gate at once. More importantly in this case the flap levers were in the flap 15 detent so almost directly in line with the CLs at a point where flap 30 is selected would be considered high workload so it's not a nice alignment to start with.
Compare the DASH-8 and SAAB 340 throttle quadrant and you will see a big difference in how the levers are aligned and the sharp edges of the prop/condition levers.