I'd argue it's more like getting dropped into single user mode. No friendly GUI, but the underlying systems are the same. The flaw with any sort of safety net is that you get used to it and forget the basics of aviation.
The big problem was that the pilot-in-command simply forgot (or did not know) how to fly the plane. He overcorrected in reaction to turbulence and the rest is history. Normal law does not allow the pilot to set an angle of attack that would lead to a stall. In the alternate law modes this protection is not there and so when the PIC didn't adhere to the rule of "don't pull up while in a stall" there was no safety net to prevent him from exacerbating the situation. In fact he kept pulling back when the stall alarm went off.
A better UI would not have solved the self-inflicted problems. From the findings sections in the wiki entry:
- The pilots apparently did not notice that the aircraft had reached its maximum permissible altitude
- The pilots did not read out the available data (vertical velocity, altitude, etc.)
- the crew made inappropriate control inputs that destabilized the flight path;
- the crew failed to follow appropriate procedure for loss of displayed airspeed information;
- the crew lacked understanding of the approach to stall
- the crew lacked practical training in manually handling the aircraft both at high altitude and in the event of anomalies of speed indication
- the two co-pilots' task sharing was weakened both by incomprehension of the situation at the time of autopilot disconnection, and by poor management of the "startle effect", leaving them in an emotionally charged situation
- the crew did not respond to the stall warning
A better cockpit may have given the pilots a better chance of surviving but definitely wouldn't have guaranteed a better outcome. One only needs to look at Asiana to see that even Boeing, with their contrasting approach to UX, can't save pilots who lack basic airmanship. My understanding is that most long-haul pilots will fly a fairly small number of segments each month, and that most of those segments are going to involve a huge amount of time spent in the middle of nowhere with autopilot on. This leads to atrophying of skills needed to manually fly a plane.
Conversely, one only need to look at Qantas' QF32 incident to see that good airmanship can absolutely make catastrophic failure survivable. Yes, there is a lot of information to process in an emergency... but the Qantas crew took that information and delegated appropriately. The Air France pilots lost their cool and fucked up.