Taking the British Midland Flight 92 (Kegworth) accident as an illustration: the smell of smoke prompted the captain who was experienced with the 737 to quickly identify the right engine as the malfunctioning one (which was a wrong clue owing to Boeing's redesign of the bleed air system). An inexperienced crew without that readily available in-depth knowledge about the 737 would not have had any quick clue for heuristic thinking and would therefore have had to more slowly and meticulously analyze the problem (e.g., by looking at the small and apparently not too clear vibration indicators).
Could this example not aid the argument for inexperienced crews having less 'bad habits' though ?
The BMI captain made the decision to shut down, what turned out to be the wrong engine, based on a learned assumption of the smoke being due to the bleed off the right hand engine.
Devils advocate here, but surely a less experienced crew, whilst making a slower decision, may ultimately made the right decision by evaluating the information in front of them, rather than going off an assumption ?
Whilst hangar, not cockpit, based my experience has been that whilst experience goes along way it is not an automatic right to be deemed 'better'.
Many a time I've seen experienced engineers have made mistakes based on their assumption / 'hunch' that turns out to be based on a previous experience that in fact wasn't relevant to the situation they were dealing with.
Safe flying
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