Over here in FAA land, the feds are now offering this conservative guidance about last minute changes to an approach:
b. POIs will work with their operators to ensure that operators have procedures that explicitly state that any changes to an approach after the initial briefing should be re-briefed in accordance with accepted crew briefing procedure. Last-minute runway or approach changes should be accepted only if pre-briefed as a backup to the planned approach. The PM should update the FMC to reflect an approach change, and verify with the PF that the new approach is properly set up in the aircraft. If time does not allow for re-brief and verification of proper FMC/cockpit setup, the flightcrew should ask for extended vectors or holding until briefing/setup can be accomplished.
c. POIs will also work with their operators to develop information about how the FMS could provide an incorrect presentation in the lateral and/or vertical profiles if waypoints are incorrectly entered, or a route discontinuity exists that is not corrected before conducting an approach.
http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/m...N_8900.311.pdf
I don't know how EK does it these days. And we won't know for a while if a botched route mod or mode selection caused this MEL altitude bust.
Seems like some operators, like Air Canada, had a rule that you couldn't do any button pushing on the FMS below 10,000 feet and if there was a runway or approach change, you would go to raw data. Of course, these days on approaches like the one discussed above at MEL, there is no raw data, at least not in the traditional sense of ground based navaids.
And, I've seen the other extreme in years past where the sim instructor would have the PNF typing all the way down to the runway to demonstrate proficiency with last minute route mods and runway changes that were very unlikely in the real world. For training, of course...