After reading through this as pilot, I'm stunned at how much flak ATC is copping for this. Almost entirely flight crew error and frustrating to listen to.
Firstly, yes, Atc made the initial error of issuing a left turn, however any pilot with even a moderate shred of situational awareness would query this as it is not logical. Even if you are half asleep when you start winding the heading bug looking for a Hdg of 180 it's immediately obvious that something isn't right as the digits in the FCU window start winding back from an easterly HDG. It was never queried by EVA, just blindly followed.
Secondly, the error was corrected by ATC soon after and acknowledged by The crew who proceeded to then carry on North (Towards high terrain) after repeated instructions to turn south. I'm with ATC wholeheartedly she says "What are you doing!?"
Yes, What the actual
are you doing?
Thirdly, in the process of ignoring / not complying with repeated ATC instructions these guys completely screwed up the traffic situation that the controller had to manage. Her workload increased 10-fold in a busy traffic situation and I feel she managed it quite well - considering she had to deal with what became essentially a rogue aircraft in her airspace.
I hear a lot of these particular guys on the airwaves with varying degrees of spoken English. The guy responding to to ATC seemed to have excellent english so I doubt that it was a factor in this incident.
I would imagine that that these guys did some sort of pre-departure brief, surely the threat of high terrain to the North would be the sticking point of this, but who knows... maybe their pre departure brief consisted of a dart in the cockpit.
Sorry, but both of the crew need a massive boot up the ass for this. Huge lack of situational awareness and basic airmanship.
