Yes, assuming that the previous crew left you a 'perfect and ready to fly plane' is one hell of an assumption to make. With tiny little pieces to collect if it ends up being wrong.
Emirates has a pretty good rep but this doesn't help.
Emirates has a pretty good rep but this doesn't help.
There has been another incident where an Emirates crew lacked any kind of basic aircraft handling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirates_Flight_521
Their main problem is a very bad rep for working conditions. Crews being overly fatigued, arcane labour laws in UAE, that makes it harder for them to hire pilots and to retain experienced pilots. Combined with a local market that doesn't have a big aviation history so less people to build on.
This is very bizarre. I once had a morning flight out of Denver (not too long ago, August 2008?) and talking to people there apparently the plane had an electronics malfunction of some sort. They said they would fly us out as soon as the plane was ready but about ten hours later, they gave up and flew us out on a plane with a different airline (which I assume was not free for them, I doubt American Airlines would fly a plane for free for United). Point is the initial problem, at least what they told us, was some lights failed to turn on but they refused to fly. I thought flight crew were very risk averse but clearly not everyone.
These guys even flew the plane back instead of being replaced by another crew, and that's with a plane that has just been used way in excess of its design parameters on more than one measure.