tdracer
I forgot to mention that on the TAROM accident flight, the FO kept trying to re-engage the autopilot as the aircraft rolled over on its side. Forget about disconnecting the autothrottle, forget about flying manually.
If people are wary to handfly on a normal day, how can they be expected to suddenly become confident in a crisis? In weird situations, many people revert to instinct. If the instincts are wrong (automatics are going to save the day), because the training was all wrong (automatics do it so much better than you, don't even try), accidents will happen. I'm only bringing up the TAROM flight, because it was exactly the same type of upset caused by the exact same thing. But there are many examples where crews have allowed automation to kill them, because they either lacked the confidence to disconnect or because they didn't even notice what was happening.
So I wouldn't find it so surprising if this particular crew was actually aware of the autothrottle problem and kept trying to figure it out, instead of disconnecting it, until they found themselves rolled over and in a dive. In the context of what's been happening over the years, it's really not that strange a scenario. There are people who would literally rather die than take manual control of their aircraft outside of takeoff and landing.