I'm certainly not saying that FMA callouts replace situational awareness and airmanship. But they do answer the question "what's it doing now?" and when the autopilot is on, that's where SA starts(not ends!) All that furious button pressing and knob turning should tell somebody they're operating at the wrong level of automation for the flight conditions.

As far as the FMAs having the correct annunciations, that's pretty much the whole point. The didn't have the correct annunciations and nobody noticed in all the accident and asap reports in the flightsafety report. The accident chain for UPS1354 started with a failure to recognize the FMAs were not in agreement with the crew's intent.


But I'm also on board with the idea that the VVM SOP is there to help us understand what the plane is doing, not to replace understanding of what the plane is doing, but that sometimes compliance does not lead to comprehension.