For Zeroninesevenone:
Tex's response makes sense to me, but I'd like to restate something that has been a point of discussion over the past three years: The aircraft senses AoA, but does not display it on the instrument panel. IIRC, it takes six or seven key strokes (based on what I've been told, I've never done this in an A330, so I don't know) to get to the page that displays AoA.
Would an AoA gage, or an AoA reading imbedded in a corner of the display have given the crew a better sense of what they were looking at, what their wing was doing, or make the stall warning alarm more compelling to them?
We don't know. Based on what is available to analyze, the scan breakdown (possibly due to training? Possibly due to over reliance on the bird? Possibly due to few reps in sims? We don't know) was a critical part of the upset, and a CRM breakdown contributed no small amount.
We don't know what we don't know,
I understand why some do not think an AoA gage is needed, in the idea of a pound of prevention being worth a pound of cure.
You typically take steps to NOT fly near the edge of stall, as a matter of policy, good airmanship, and for the sake of your passengers.
That doesn't change the fact that the aircraft has AoA probes, you fly the wing, and if you don't know what your aircraft is doing you can make a fundemantal mistake.
AoA is a critical metric that tells you whether or not you are flying, or falling.
I conrfess, I learned to fly on small aircraft with no AoA gage.
Varga 2150a Kachina Aircraft history performance and specifications
I also knew well enough not to stall, but that little plane had a very easy to recognize buffet. Also, where I flew that little plane, icing up the pitot tubes wasn't an issue: I didn't fly in bad weather.
I later taught flying in the Navy in a trainer that had AoA gage. My cockpit awareness, once I learned how to use it, increased significantly.
What I had to do versus what professional pilots, who fly pax each day, have to do differs considerably. I realize the arguments against, but the data is already being fed into the cockpit.
How about making it available? Yes, 99.99 percent of the time, you don't need it. Upon that 0.01% occurrence, it might help save your chili.