xcitation, might a 10 degree nose down attitude give them a rather distinct impression they are in a dive, even after asking for full nose up? He asked for nose up. Nothing happened. He asked for more nose up. Nothing happened. He kept this up to hauling back on the stick all it would go. THEN the plane goes nose DOWN 10 degrees over a few seconds?
I suppose if he'd ever been properly trained about stalls in A330s he might have recognized "the real thing" and not a warning. Perhaps if he'd had a real AoA report to look at he might have recognized "the real deal" and not a mere warning.
The plane quit doing what he asked for. It went nose down, and stay there depressingly long, when he had full up on the elevator.
(And it was Takata, bless his heart, who pointed me to this in one of his messages in the last few days here on these pages. I looked at the plots, wondered about the plot being inverted, wondered about translation, wondered about a lot of things until I decided the plane was doing its own thing while the pilot wanted nose up. And I asked, what happens to a pilots mind when that happens if he's not really stall trained in the plane he is flying? Small planes don't stall that way, do they?)