Incorrect.
They had numerous instrument/indication problems in that cockpit which had a lot to do with why the pilots were so damn confused and had trouble functioning.
I am, by the way, basing this on my reading of the report and analysis for the accident from BEA, the French equivalent of our FAA/NTSB investigations. They did publish an English translation of the report back in 2011.
But from the wikipedia link, some highlights of things that impaired the crew:
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Temporary inconsistency between the measured speeds, likely as a result of the obstruction of the pitot tubes by ice crystals, caused autopilot disconnection and flight control mode reconfiguration to alternate law
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The crew’s lack of response to the stall warning, whether due to a failure to identify the aural warning, to the transience of the stall warnings that could have been considered spurious, to the absence of any visual information that could confirm that the aircraft was approaching stall after losing the characteristic speeds, to confusing stall-related buffet for overspeed-related buffet, to the indications by the flight director that might have confirmed the crew’s mistaken view of their actions, or to difficulty in identifying and understanding the implications of the switch to alternate law, which does not protect the angle of attack.
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The cockpit’s lack of a clear display of the inconsistencies in airspeed readings identified by the flight computers.
I’ve long felt that the French authorities played “blame the dead pilots” rather than admit to possible design flaws in the Airbus, but that is admittedly my opinion. It would hardly be the first time a government scapegoated a deceased flight crew rather than make the changes that would provide better information to the pilots in such circumstances.
Nope, it’s correct. It is vanishingly rare for any airplane to have an angle-of-attack indicator. The airspeed indicator (when it’s working, that is, when the pitot tube isn’t iced over) and stall indicators are reasonable proxies for the information such a device would give. It’s not a design flaw, it’s industry standard practice not to have an AoA indicator. Now, whether or not they should be standard is something people have discussing for decades…
The BEA also claimed that the passengers wouldn’t have noticed/been aware of anything unusual, either, which is bullshit because there’s no way they would NOT have been aware of some of the wild gyrations that airplane went through prior to belly-flopping into the Atlantic.
Much of the “pilot error” was connected to problems getting proper information to the pilots.
Certainly, it was a circumstance where if the pilots HAD an AoA they might have been more situationally aware and not crashed. It’s not “pilot error” if the pilots had no way of knowing what was wrong because they weren’t provided with an instrument that would give them that information