they were hired with low time
- I've heard tell a lot of pilots start with 'low time', and in the 21st Century where most of us live, they then monitor autopilots for years (including the AF447 Captain).
They were NOT 'new and inexperienced' - get your terminology right - unless, of course, you consider 10 years on AB, 39 SA route rotations and 6500 hrs 'new and inexperienced'?
It seems you may have dozed off for a decade or two. Exactly WHAT do you expect a crew to have as minimum 'experience'?
"They could not hand fly." That much is obvious, but I would add for accuracy "They could not hand fly an AB340 in Alt Law.". How they would have fared in a different a/c we will never know.