Sorry to barge in so late but I was busy doing some re-training on the 320 family.
I am now in a country in which any experience on the airplane doesn't count at all and we all start from scratch, i.e re-do a complete type-rating , so I feel I am in a position where I can answer some questions .
(from Basil Seal ) :
"Take it at 250 clean and pull the throttle to idle and pull the stick all the way back and see if the protections can completely keep you out of trouble with the rapid airspeed decay from the zoom. Maybe, maybe not."
Did that one. Exactly that one. Pitch stopped at 25 ° N/u, then Alpha protection came in... nothing to it, kept on losing altitude, IAS into the amber with some 7,8 ° pitch up.
Coming back to the subject, if I may, there was absolutely nothing wrong in that approach (including the decision to continue using the RWY 23 after the change-over to the tower)...until the airplane was blown rather violently to the left, off the centerline.
The only comment another pilot worthy of his licence could make is that, at that point a decision to go around was the preferable option . Why ? so close to the ground, returning to the RWY centerline would have meant (and they attempted it ) an important turn into wind followed immediately - and I'm talking fractions of a second - by a flare-cum-decrabbing maneuver.
That sort of skills is probably outside the competence of most pilots, in whose company I include myself.
As the 320 roll rate is greater than any Boeing pilot could find, I am left with no doubt that had it been another airplane, it could well have ended spread in the clover.
The rest of the speculations about the pilots and the airplane belongs to armchair aviation.
After some 12 years on the 320 while having more than 5500 hrs on the 737, I feel I am entitled to this opinion.