Given the lack of instrumentation after the electrics were lost I can well imagine an overwhelming urge to get visual as quickly as possible. Combined with all the other factors (poss inc depressurisation) it would be a calm head indeed that did not panic to some extent - and diving to the VOR at about the normal altitude was a fatal mistake in itself. Even if they had got visual at the VOR at 10,000ft they were going to run out of air half way to the runway no matter hat else happened. If they'd dived at the airport things could have worked out better, but who knows. From what I've read here they seem to have had enough altitude to have made the field easily had a wiser course of action prevailed. The fact is they flew into a position from which a crash was inevitable and that doesn't indicate a lot of calm thinking, something this flight seems to have been without from the start.