What are the thoughts of those pilots on here about the Captain (I believe it was) REDUCING the flap setting after realizing their problem of maybe not making the runway?
A master stroke
The last stage of flap is almost all drag with little contribution to CL (coefficient of lift) so he immediately got rid of some drag.
The go-around procedure on, e.g., the B747 is - max thrust, flap 20 (jus' like that!) and you don't drop out of the sky but transition instantly to a high energy situation partly by getting rid of drag which has permitted you to keep the engines spooled up just for that eventuality.