Finger Trouble- How costly it can be on a modern aircraft
I was waiting for some sort of reliable data from investigation to emerge before posting this story. Though the enquiry report is not published yet, the scenario of a mix up of a "2" and "3" looks most realistic.
I am with aviation for nearly 4 decades. I relate an incident that I recall very vividly which can high-light the perils of finger trouble on a modern aircraft and how pilots of yesteryears had a better knack of spotting gross errors.
It was a 747-200, 3 man crew, and I was in the cockpit (I am not a pilot). During take off preparation the 3rd crew, Flight Engineer prepared a Take off card with speeds V1, Vr, etc and kept on the pedestal. This was the norm in the airline I was working at that time. The pilot in command while setting the white bugs on his airspeed indicator, paused, gave back the card to the FE and said "Re-check, these are wrong". The First officer had already set the bugs on his side and did not see the error. The FE , re-checked the speeds, and corrected the error. There was an 11 knots error and by this time he was sweating profusely, which I remember very well. He told me later in the flight, "if the Captain reports the matter he will be fu****". A few weeks later I found out that the incident was indeed reported by the Captain, the FE was grounded and send for retraining.
A question will arise for many present day pilots, "How did the captain spot the error"? Well the year was 1982, when computers were not available and crew had a fair idea of these important figures for a particular flight. They flew one type of aircraft.
In today's scenario, everything in the cockpit is automated. The Laptop calculated figures are entered in FMC CDU, are automatically set on the PFD for V1 speeds etc for both pilots. Pilots have less chance of detecting the error, as they fly A330 one day and A345 the very next. One flight can be on a short 2 hour sector and the next can be a 14 hr one on A340. The errors from finger trouble are rarely reported and highlighted only when disasters occur.
I feel sorry for the crew. One single mistake can ruin an impeccable career. In EK407 case the error nearly killed them and the paxs. Probably could have killed off the airline as well. Any airline would have punished them unfortunately the same way (Except the highly unionized ones)
Human factors could be the main cause, but for such gross errors, you pay with your job. That is life for a pilot, I suppose. Hope the crew had no mortgage on Dubai property as well, in whcih case their next shock will be when they go to close their Bank accounts!!