ok, for once I'm not going to just blame the airbus.
circling to land in real ''weather'' can be dangerous. as most people know, in the USA we (at major airlines) have all but given them up...although we do allow circling in basic vfr conditions (1000' and 3 statue miles).
to go back to basics, all runways served by jet airliners should have ILS or equivilent to all runways so no circling would be required.
I am very sorry to hear about this crash. a great tragedy.
could water ingestion in the engines have caused a problem which took the crew's attention away from navigating/flying the circle????