Rat 5
if every GA needed manual thrust, or follow through, would this type of confused accident happen again?
"If every GA needed manual thrust", I suspect we'd just experience different types of accidents. In fact, likely more accidents, because we'd be changing the 99% of our GAs that are 'easy' and mostly work well, for the sake of the 1% of GAs that are badly described in the manuals, are hardly ever trained or briefed, but which will generally catch pilots by surprise!
More training of this manouvre, better manuals and knowledge, and regular pre-briefing are what's required to prevent this accident occurring again.
In fact, had they simply recently pre-briefed this manoeuvre, I could pretty much guarantee this accident would not have happened!
That's all.
Any other ideas are absolutely fine, but are simply solving problems that frankly, didn't occur here.