Would Asiana 214 have crashed had the airspeed indicator been the big round dial of yesteryear?
I bet it would not.
Would Turkish 1951 have crashed at Amsterdam if its airspeed indicators were the big round dials of yesteryear?
I bet not.
For those on this thread convinced that "cultural factors" are the explanation for the Asiana crash, consider the previous fatal accident to a scheduled airline service in the USA.
That was Colgan 3407, the Dash 8 Q400, that stalled on approach to Buffalo, New York in 2009. That aircraft had an American crew.
But note that it too, stalled. Would it have crashed if, for airspeed indicators, it had the big round dials of yesterday? I bet not.
All of these aircraft had airspeed "tapes", which is typical for "glass cockpit" aircraft.
To the pilots of glass cockpit aircraft: Have you noticed how much more brain power is required to use the airspeed tape?
To assess airspeed, you must train your gaze at a tiny 1 inch x 1 inch patch on your glass panel (the PFD), then read and process the digits.
With the big round dial of yesteryear however, you only need to glance at a point within about 3 inches of the pointer. The angular position of the pointer instantly tells you whether your airspeed is too fast, too slow, or "about right". No need to read digits.
What about Air France 447? It too stalled. Would a big round dial for airspeed have helped those highly stressed pilots? I bet it would!
The airspeed tape may be 3-5 inches long, but the bit where you look is the central 1 inch x 1 inch. This is where the action is. But this size is too small - and the brain power to use it is just too much.
You don't notice the extra mental processing demands created by the tape in normal, low workload, low stress situations.
In high stress, high workload situations however, the airspeed tape might as well be invisible! The brain ignores it - either because it takes the eyes too long to land on the little patch, or turbulence makes it too difficult to hit the patch, or because the brain knows it will need too much work to process.
With airspeed indicators that become "invisible" at high workload moments, with the aircraft in a low speed flight phase, we should expect they will stall every now and then.
And this is exactly what we are seeing.