bear, the picture The Shadow paints is an approach to, or arrival at, the coffin corner, or at least one of the legs of the angle with CC at its peak, with the crew utterly unaware of their flight condition changing.
Question for 330 drivers: how noticeable is the change in engine noise/pitch when you move the throttles forward at altitude. Is it as noticeable in the cockpit as it is in the cabin?
I ask due to thinking through the scenario that The Shadow presented. If a change in airspeed input to the system was insidiously slow, so also would be the increases in throttle, would it not?
I have a picture in my mind of a frog being ever so slowly boiled ...