Malcolm Gladwell's excellent book "The Outliers" covers the Avianca / JFK crash due to fuel exhaustion and is extremely interesting - it's Ch7 "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes".
Columbians register on Gert Hofstede's Power-Distance Index (respect for authority) as one of the highest - meaning that, as a culture, they have a high respect for perceived authority and this was considered a factor when they were negotiating to land at JFK (where ATC is generally pretty alpha bordering on aggressive).
One can imagine that some of us in this situation would head for the nearest runway regardless of what ATC are saying but, for others, it's not so easy. We'll wait for the reports but it looks like there's going to be a lot of Human Factors across the board nvolved in this one.