While we're at it, is there a real safety benefit from having A/T on the type of approach flown here?
Taking all the conditions here into account, weather, and the expectation that this was an autocoupled approach up to becoming vis - then the answer to that question should be blatantly obvious (there being several equally obvious reasons) to anyone claiming to be a qualified (esp. transport jet) jockey! Flying on AP with LOC and G/S and manual throttles (for reasons other than failure) would make for some interesting passenger experiences, esp' given the right weather - but then that was something which Rainboe indirectly mentioned earlier.
So we can perhaps add pax comfort to ease and convenience as reasons for using A/T on the type of approach flown. But I'm having trouble reconciling fairly castigating this crew for their apparent poor monitoring of speed and thrust setting, with a justification for using A/T based on the perceived difficulty of qualified crews to manually coordinate speed/thrust with an autopilot flown approach.