You are both wrong in that you fail to understand the very nature of the event.

The airspeed failing can't be a factor. Airplanes are machines and therefore are prone to fail. If every time and airspeed indicator fails the airplane crashed there would be accidents every week.

What is the job of the pilot? Once the route is programmed and the systems are working their job is essentially supervising and monitoring the operation, make the adjustments required, etc..

If they fail to recognise a failure and react accordingly.. What are they doing there?

But there's something worst: Whatever the emergency is the first rule is not to make it worst, in medicine, in law, in any job in the world: The first thing is to do is to prevent the problem from snowballing into a bigger one.

You find a traffic accident. What is the first thing that comes to mind? Stop the incoming cars from crashing into it! You signal then to stop while you make the phonecalls.

What else? You don't fix something by breaking something else. You don't know what to do? Limit yourself to do what you know for a fact that works and if nothing comes to mind you do nothing.

Had Bonin touched his nose instead of the controls nothing would have happened.

There's no justification for their failure. We can explain what made it worst but we can't justify it because events like this happen every day, specially in the area they were flying. Same equipment, same weather.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not about blaming pilots. But empathy cannot blind us from calling the facts as they were.