Fixation can take over, and deafen you to the guy yelling "roll left" directly in your right ear.
Here it seems the entire crew were aware they were on the way down without knowing why or anybody offering any ideas on how to change the situation for the better.
The PF chose to accept he was overspeeding and pulled the nose up.
The sad thing is PNF seemed to be more aware of what was going on. Very early on in the sequence PNF effectively declares,
we are in UAS regime and we've lost protections. PF never acknowledges. I think it was so close to AP/ATHR disconnect, that PF was fixated on trying to make his own assessment of the situation. It seems it never registered with PF that they were in UAS and/or ALT2. His actions are inline with believing either he was overspeeding or was in Normal Law. (doesn't matter which one)
Close to 2 minutes later when PF finally declares he cannot believe his instruments, it was too late, he had put the a/c in a stall regime.
The stall warning coming back when they pitched nose down didn't help either. The initial response from the PF may have been wrong, but then on it was a concerted effort by PF and computer to hold the a/c in a stall.
Very sad...
