First off let me say I don't care for boeing or airbus.
Now that I've got your attention.
An airbus pilot that I know explained to me how the thrust reversers are selected on the airbus.
This explanation made it abundantly clear that pulling or trying to pull both thrust levers to idle would be a natural, instinctive if you will, method of landing the plane. While there isn't a reverse lever/throttle, something akin to that is required to enter the reverse regime.
Some very good folks in Brazil, accustomed to the slang/colloquilisms of Portuguese, have contacted me and explained that the words used on the CVR/Transcript meant that there was difficulty in moving something (thought to be the throttles, or the devices used to control acceleration), just like words in English that might have meant difficulty in opening a Jar...something was stuck.
While arguments in favor of the plane vs. the pilots have been quite well written, there is still a chance that moving the throttles was not possible.
Add to this, there were two pilots who could equally get to and see the thrust levers/throttles. The pilot in the right seat, someone hired as a captain, would not give up his life if he could have pulled the throttle to idle.
Ask yourself pilots in the right seat, would you let someone kill you, just to keep your job?
We may remember that it was the copilot (right seat) who finally got thrust reversers to deploy on the Southwest Airlines 737 at Chicago Midway...some 18 seconds after touchdown.
We've talked about going around after the landing...yes an option, but we have the time to think about it.
During the early years of both automobiles and airplanes, stopping both was sometimes accompanied by the operator/pilot/driver saying, "WHOA"...just like a horseback rider might have done.
Some of the earliest French planes required the throttle to be pulled back to increase power. How did this make sense? Well, pull back on the yoke to go up, add power by pulling back on the throttle to go up.
So, look at all the schematics of the airbus. Read everything you can about it. Wonder about the human factors. Play with it in the simulator...but ask yourself what you would have done in the right seat!