Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Many of the training procedures that we are used to today in the UK stem directly from Kegworth. There was no MCC or CRM in those days.
The engines were not air-tested but simply an older one speeded up to give the extra thrust. There had been compressor blade failures before but the crew had not been made aware of them.
They had recieved about 6 hrs "conversion training" and between them had very little experience on the aircraft (less than 100hrs added both together I think).
Pilot jobs were hard to come by and management played on this. A previous pilot had been sacked for diverting in an emergency to the nearest airport rather than contacting base who would have told him to come to EMA.
The culture was such (and in many airlines of the day, not the least BA) was that the cabin and flight deck were separate entities and only the purser was allowed to communicte with the flight deck.
At night being suddenly subject to severe vibrations such that it was almost impossible to read the aircraft instruments, smoke in the cockpit (in previous aircraft associated with the right engine), the vibration guages were the size of a 10p piece (much smaller than other engine instruments and by implication much less important, plus had been notoriously unreliable on the previous aircraft) would have been impossible to read.The aircraft was subject to considerable yawing as the autothrottle kicked in and out (due engine failing),the Captain asked the FO (who also clearly did not know) "which one", the latter replied "Its the Lef..er..Right one". The Captain ordered that one to be brought to flight idle.
When the FO did this, disconnecting the auto-throttle the severe vibration virtually disappeared, the yawing stopped and the smoke disappeared The left engine because the autothrottle was not trying to make maintain max climb power started to appear normal.
How many crews without the hindsight of this accident would have said the right one was the problem since by simply bringing the right engine to flight idle all the symptoms disappeared?
When asked afterwards why did you disconnect the autopilot captain he replied that that was what he had always been ordered to do in his simulator training whenever he had a single engine problem which in those days was exactly true. There are many other points I could make but the above are the most obvious.
Being judgemental, clever,pompous and thinking that you could never have done what these pilots did, given their training, the airline culture and all the other existing circumstances at the time is exactly the attitude that will lead to further accidents. I hope I am wrong.