Originally Posted by
Sir Korsky
and here's the problem. The TAWS would have been screaming at every turn on that trip and the pilot would have likely disabled the distracting audio, thus making it pretty much useless right up until impact. The TAWS doesn't know if you can't see where you're going.
If the aircraft was equipped with a TAWS with a “screaming audio”; as I wrote, not all do so. The system on the type I fly freezes the nav display until cancelled, which is a bit of a hint that it might be time to go to plan B.