Excellent posts, SoaringTheSkies. And thanks for summing it up!
It is quite true that in emergency situations our brain is programmed to get away from the danger as soon as possible: flee! The adrenaline kick stimulates all fysical abilities and makes us act fast. But this implies also that higher brain functions (the declarative memory) are less readily accesible at that moment. On the contrary, the brain makes sure to learn from the experience: it activates a memory booster (the amygdala) that strenghtens the saving mechanism, in order to make us react even more rapidly the next time round. This is one of the reason why people suffer from the post traumatic syndrome.
Where it concerns the case at hand (one TL left in CLB), I was thinking of an example involving keys too: each morning I take 4 items with me when going to work: wallet, keys, cell phone and service card. No problem, I 'll always remember them. But if for some reason this routine gets disturbed by eg. a fifth thing I have to take with me only that day, it happens quite often that I forget one of the four routine ones...
Still find it irresponsible of AB and regulators not making the logic update mandatory after two earlier incidents of the same kind, luckily with less or no people killed. It could have prevented this accident. Commercial arguments seem to be very powerful.