Originally Posted by soylentgreen
The report provides references suggesting that in a confusing environment, humans can be cognitively deaf to aural stimuli, and tend to prefer and respond to visual stimuli much better.
So, from a cognitive perspective, the accident makes sense. A big part of this was the human-machine interface, which did an extremely poor job of letting the pilots know what was actually going on.
I am fairly certain that this would not have happened with a proper HUD or FLIR or similar technology. If the hud can give a sense of the horizon (which is a big point of HUDs) the pilots _should_ have quickly realized that "this attitude is not right at this FL" and pitched down. I have a very hard time seeing that a HUD would not have worked for them, but you never know. Also, the HUD has to be able to use backup info of course. I have seen this done so it is of course doable, even though I have a really, really hard time accepting planes with exclusively electronic backup systems....