Originally Posted by
FullWings
because getting 50 30 20... on an NPA with no visual reference is definitely attention getting.
While you would hope that is the case, history suggests otherwise.
When we get into increased stress situations, the ability for the average human to cope and even comprehend external stimuli drops off, as a function of stress and cognitive load. We then start to drop signals that would normally be received as we tend to focus on the highest priority task. Whether we even can multitask as such (except for our better halves, that can certainly do that....) is a question that has raised some debate, do we multi task or do we rapidly serialise demands. I suspect it is a bit of both normally, but under stress we prioritise on highest perceived risk items and "loadshed". In this case, it is possible that the crew really didn't get the EGPWS expanded height callouts, but that would include the IQ challenge of "Retard, Retard" which is a simple RALT function... Its a while since I looked at A320/330 DFDR readouts, I don't believe that the alt call discretes are recorded though.