Good Lord, I find this all very disturbing.
Firstly what sort of a crappy airline is Emirates?
Do they think that by sacking the pilots their inadequate fatigue management will be improved? Discipline them perhaps in some sort of 21st Century way, but to sack them and thus sweep the whole thing under the carpet? So I gather as far as EK are concerned there is no longer a problem?
Profoundly stupid. What a rotten airline and rock-ape management style.
Secondly, it is distressing how certain individuals on this forum (like galdion) are so vitriolic towards fellow(?) aviators. Of course there will always be retired old fools like 411A sitting in the desert trying to get a rise out of younger peers but the depth of anonymous venom from so many computer-warriors is disappointing. I suspect few of the really vitriolic posters have ever been in charge of a long-haul airliner so essentially their posts are nothing more than uneducated drivvel. Everyone has an opinion but those posts are a waste of bandwidth on a forum such as this.
Operationally I always live by the idiom "There by the grace of god go I". I also try to double and triple-check anything that will kill me/my passengers. However I have been rostered on some stupid patterns and have even found myself falling asleep on descent, try as hard as I may not to. Pilots are homo-sapiens and we get tired, no matter how hard we try to prepare for back-of-the-clock ops or fight fatigue when airborne. No 9-5 manager ever seems to comprehend that. How much money you get paid has no relationship to your physiological ability to fight waves of tiredness.
Bottom line is that yes these pilots screwed-up and they did a good job afterwards. Whether they screwed-up because of fatigue, systematic weaknesses, complacency, laziness or stupidity needs to be thoroughly assessed (and should have been BEFORE taking action against the crew).
There needed to be a measured and methodical analysis of the accident and I haven't seen much in the way of measured and calm anything so far.
The way Emirates handled the matter and the way some ill-informed, uneducated, jealous or ignorant PPRuNe posters comment leaves me saddened about the apparent lack of intellect in our industry nowadays.
The combination of primitive airline management and Big-Brotheresque finger-pointing colleagues is not a step forward for the industy.