notfred
They are staring at 4 reds on the PAPI and not going around. Do you really think changing from speed tape to a dial is going to make them go around?
The lack of go around is the big problem here. Yes, they messed up the automatics but if they'd pressed TOGA when it first started going pear shaped I suspect that we'd be looking at an incident report about the automatics rather than a fatal accident report.
You miss one vital point though.
They saw 4 reds, because they had been dropping quite low on speed, thus being unable to arrest the descent.
Being not quite familiar with the switchology, but would have pressing TOGA reactivated Autothrottle?