I welcome USMC to the fray. Seems to be from the "next generation" from 'bird and I, but has the same feelings/beliefs about AoA as RetiredF4 and other folks here that have used HUDs and AoA indicators for thousands of landings ( not hours, considering our mission lengths),
It is true that you can use the FPV relatonship to the ship's "boresight" to determine AoA. But why go thru that when you can have a simple display that shows your AoA WRT to stall or best approach AoA ( speed will vary depending upon gross weight and configuration)?. My leading edge flap failure video is old and grainy, but you can easily see it WRT to the pitch lines, and both are related to the real world via an inertial system, with no regard for frozen speed/altitude sensors. AoA doofers are still working. We can laugh at my mistakes near the end, but I corrected enough to save the jet and my skinny butt. The AoA is that braket below the FPV, and had I tried to reach the dersired AoA for normal approach, I would have lost roll authority, so I flew at a lower AoA. As with the A-7, F-14, F-16, F-15, AV-8, F-18, F-22, and now F-35 you pull to get the braket even with the FPV, or push. My upward FPV change near the end was due to extra power, as I had started down quickly when putting out speed brakes from habit ( not good).
http://www.sluf.org/misc_pages/lef-landing.m4v
So much for the basics of using AoA and FPV.
I'll guarantee that the AF447 troops would have noticed their FPV WRT to the pitch lines and realized that the FPV was not going up and that AoA was above the stall AoA. Pitch attitude be damned.
No doubt the unreliable speed was a factor, as was trusting the "protections" when in a back-up flight control law. But inertial vectors and operable AoA displays would possibly have saved the day.