my comments as a PPL/IMC holder:
If I know that Power plus attitude=performance, so did all 3 pilots there that night. They had power (the engines were working normally) they had attitude info (attitude indicator, not derived from pitots) so obtaining a performance seems the logical way to go. The time the descent took rules out the startle factor, and as is well known, once the descent stabilises at 1g, the seat of the pants feel is useless at best and misleading at worst, yet they still should have had the AI. Again, even as a PPL I know to trust my instruments and ignore the seat of pants sensations. So, why didn't they??
I can see a couple of possibilities- 1. they didn't trust the AI as they were aware of the pitot problems and decided to go with the seat of pants sensations or 2. the stall they found themselves in was irrecoverable due to some design problem or issue inherent in the jets design. No comment whatsoever on AB vs boeing, but don't swept wing jets has a nasty characteristic of entering a flat stall which is hard/very hard to break?
Given the possibility of option 2, and if I were AF or AB I would be looking to promote option (1) since option (2) has the unpalatable effect of admitting that some stalls are invariably fatal, not something which passengers want to hear. So much cleaner to blame it on human error, psychologically, its easier on passengers to believe that the pilots made a mistake, rather than face the possibility that a particular set of circumstances will result in an invariably fatal outcome. What do the stable extroverts amongst us think?