Clandestino,
I agree with most of what you said, however, since we are on the topic:
[...] flying at around 30 ft RA, with engines at idle, waiting for alpha-floor too kick in [...]
According to the report, the overflight was planned and briefed as follows:
Originally Posted by Habsheim investigation report, section 2.2.3, p. 50
1) at 100ft
2) with flaps in position 3 and landing gear extended
3) in level flight decelerating to maximum angle of attack [...]
4) after disengagement of automatic go-around protection [...] (alpha-floor)
[...]
7) with go-around initiated by the first officer
Whether or not they were aware of alpha-floor inhibition below 100ft agl is irrelevant, because, elaborating on point 4) above, ...
Originally Posted by Habsheim investigation report, section 2.2.3, p. 52
4) [...]
The inhibition in this case can only be achieved in practice by pressing and holding the two switches placed on the throttles. After 30 seconds, inhibition becomes permanent for the rest of the flight.
... they had disabled it anyway.
Note 1: The described procedure disables all autothrust functionality until a reset on the ground.
Although Alpha-Floor protection is a function of the autothrust system, it engages at high angles of attack approaching alpha-max, regardless of the prior autothrust state (disarmed, armed, engaged). Thus autothrust cannot be disarmed (as opposed to disabled) in such a way that alpha-floor protection is inhibited. It must be disabled to inhibit this protection.
Note 2:Concerning the unexpectedly long time the engines took to spool up, the report concludes that TOGA thrust application was planned from a thrust setting required for a slow, prolonged low-level flyby at alpha-max, i. e. a high power setting, from which maximum thrust would have been available very quickly.
Instead the engines had to spool up from idle. According to the FCOM I have seen it should have been in "Apprach Idle", which is a raised idle setting to allow faster acceleration to TOGA thrust, but this may have been introduced later than 1988, and it may still have taken several seconds to spool up.)
Bernd