Kev wrote:

I believe NASA's done studies showing that if you simply had the
current AI's "wings" tilt towards the side you were turning, pilots had
no problem instantly understanding their situation.

The very first AIs, then developed in Germany, worked that way, and
studies seem to imply that it's more intuitive. This design is still in
use in the countries of the former soviet union and their region of
influence. The AI as it is known in our part of the world was designed
by Sperry, IIRC, and I think it was at least partly a matter of
copyright to do it the way they have.

Pilots who were trained in eastern Europe and then are hired by western
companies have to be retrained, which is extremely difficult. In a
stress situation, you allways tend to fall back to the procedures
learned in primary training. There was at least one airliner crash which
was the direct result of this: Easterly trained pilots flying a westerly
equipped plane with inadequate training, consequently misinterpreting
the AI in a situation of high workload. The report is well worth a
reading: http://www.bfu.admin.ch/common/pdf/1781_e

Stefan