Always happy to see the
could-never-happen-to-me-itis in post-occurrence threads.
Hindsight is always 20/20; after every accident you can say
oh all they had to do was x, etc...
The rational brain is suppressed in situations like these.
The only way to deal with them is frequent high-stress training and accumulating as much of theoretical knowledge as possible.
Take a look at this (what they were seeing):
© Swedish Accident Investigation Authority | Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Sweden
Alarms screaming at you, negative G's hitting you, you don't know what's happening, adrenaline rushing through your body with your body clock asleep, no outside visibility, you're disoriented; yes, I can definitely see them losing it. At that point it would've been difficult to recover. I agree the initial reaction was not supposed to be so swift as the flight was smooth and stable but what do they teach us: never trust your senses in LVC, your ADI is your life. And this instrumental piece of equipment, which was guiding the pilot his whole life without error and which had earned his deep trust, ended up betraying him.
To include the (only) two recommendations:
Ensure that the design criteria of PFD units are improved in such a way that pertinent cautions are not removed during unusual attitude or declutter modes.
How about instigating additional and more frequent training including curricula concerning human performance in distress, communication, crosscheck, unusual attitude recovery, high altitude flight dynamics...
Ensure that a general system of initial standard calls for the handling of abnormal and emergency procedures and also for unusual and unexpected situations is implemented throughout the commercial air transport industry.
When you have a 'STALL, STALL' warning yelling at you for a full minute and you still don't figure you're in a stall, we have a different set of problems to solve.
It's easy to shove it on the two fellows who can't defend themselves and call it a day, but remember, a fish rots from the head down.
The next time you load up and takeoff, know that the fish is still rotting and the clock is ticking. 'Safe flight.