Thanks Hugh. You prompted me to dig a little deeper, so spoke to someone closer to the event than I. He said that the person was a check and training captain who was planning to write up the fact that the condition levers were stiff to operate even with the friction loose. He was simply obtaining information for the engineers rather than attempting to fix it himself, not an unreasonable thing to do.
He also said that the pilot was not stood down, and that no disciplinary action will be taken. That is good news.
He also said that their SOPs have already been amended accordingly, so looks like lesson learned, albeit an expensive one...
And of course the best part is that no-one was hurt, at least not physically!
