Having recently joined V Australia after experiencing several other
airline preflight proceedures all I can say is this-
Firstly, the V Australia SOP's are basically Emirates, being established
by mainly ex-Emirate trainers, who know no better.
The entire process is compressed into the last few minutes before
push-back with an idiotic scramble to set up performance and
navigation numbers all mixed together.
This creates chaos and time pressures on the crew to complete
the process, followed by an extensive pre-start checklist before
pushback, the workload in these mad minutes is ridiculous.
If either UAE or Australian regulators had a clue they would demand
modification of these proceedures, as I believe this process was
a definite causal factor in the MEL accident.
The tiredness factor is subject to conjecture, but the proceedures
before start are clearly visible to even an inexperienced regulator.
Sadly the pilots involved are now victims of a badly thought out
pre-start process that has crossed the ocean to V Australia as well.