It seems that everyone wants to actually "hands on" fly the airplane. Those days are over. Why use a computer in bad weather and not in good weather? If it works best when the pilot cannot visually see, why isn't that the best way on a clear day? Or am I missing something.
In 1955 I worked at Curtis Wright and was in the back of the cockpit of the first simulator that used an actual cockpit, during acceptance tests by the government. C118, DC6.
I would say you are missing something. In fact, I would say you are missing a lot of different somethings. I guess this begs a long spiel about automation and human factors. That stuff can be looked up in da googles. In this particular case, the human set the A/T such that it was 'armed' but not 'enabled' and the human possibly thought it was both armed and enabled(I think the transcript uses the word 'hold' mode). So, the A/T did exactly as the designers of the automation system said it was supposed to do, it sat there, and did not advance the throttles as the plane slowed below the target speed. it worked flawlessly right up to the point where the human had to take over and resolve the discrepancy.
So the computer that manages the A/T, and in other modes provides a measure of protection was doing exactly what it was told to do, maintain its position and not move. Good computer, you followed the instruction from the human to perfection. The human waited, and waited, and waited for the A/T to do its thing, and the A/T computer was sitting there waiting for the human to do its thing, and viola!
Perhaps we can build more heuristics into flight computers: "Ah, I see that you set me to 'hold' mode when you really wanted me to engage 'active' mode and provide speed control as you are on final, and want me to manage the thrust. I see, so I will override the 'hold' mode that you set, and put myself in active mode, thus maintaining target speed(1.3 Vso) for ever, and ever, and ever, and ever. Oops, you seem to have moved the levers forward to TOGA, but you didn't deselect active mode, so I will ignore your thrust request to 100% rated power because you didn't disengage the A/T, so you don't get any thrust, because I decide when and how to apply thrust." Yeah, that's better.
Autothrottles will take care of the rest. 
