Many accidents and incidents could be prevented by crews (1) looking out of the window, (2) being able to comprehend that something unexpected is happening – "WTF, this doesn't look right" – (3) being able and willing to respond to unusual circumstances, and unconstrained from doing so. In this case the AC crew had clearly reached the "WTF" stage and it'll be interesting to know whether they'd have made it to stage 3 (go-around) by themselves if ATC hadn't told them to. In other cases, such as Asiana 214 if I understand it correctly, the crew never get as far as stage 2.
A few years ago a 747 was cleared to land at LHR although an A320 was lined up for takeoff on the same runway. Daytime, visual; the A320's topside color happened to be gray, blending with the runway; its company's SOP was to have strobes off at that stage; so the 747 crew didn't see the A320 until the last minute ... but they did make it to stage 3 and went around from about 200ft agl.