[VBprogrammer]

> The reason it was optional is because AOA doesn't mean anything to civilian pilots and the option only made sense for airlines who hire ex-militaray pilots who can actually read the AOA indicator and make sense of it.

Do you have a source for that because as far is I can see it is rubbish.

Military pilots are probably more familiar with AoA as early swept wing aircraft needed to be flown with careful attention to it. However several civilian accident investigations have suggested an AoA indicator as a potential mitigation. It's not exactly like reading tea leaves, if you keep the value below 15 or so degrees the wing is flying. Much above that it won't be.

They are also used to good effect by backcountry private pilots who need to extract maximum performance from their aircraft.

[missosoup]

Commercial pilots are trained to work with airspeed and glideslope not AOA. I don't know what else to tell you. If you want to hear the same thing from an authority figure, the same youtube channel I linked earlier discusses this. Pick up a sample manual if you want to check something that's a basic fact in the industry.