Hello Phil (Today, 1202z),
Are you being a little unkind to the AAIB? The statement in the initial report that the engines "did not respond" to an autothrottle demand at approximately 600 ft turns out, a week later, not to have been the whole story. But does it make it wrong?
We are now told that the engines did respond to the first demand initially, but soon reduced thrust one after the other. We can infer that the autothrottle subsequently sent a series of demands, to which the engines did not respond, as stated in the initial report.
There is currently no evidence to the contrary, and the handling pilot would have noticed if there was an autothrottle problem. This is because, on the B777, the throttle levers move to reflect the demands of the autothrottle. When the handling pilot intervened and pushed the levers (even further) forward, the engines still failed to respond properly, if at all.
As for suggestions of "pedantry", from southern Africa, I doubt that any accident investigators, employed at Farnborough these days (if ever), fall into that category. The expressons "rigour", and "not jumping to early conclusions" would be more appropriate in my experience.