td, what about the 'spool up' required on final?
Yes LW, the GA in the sim, or even when flight testing, rely on a 'fling' effect, being at or above speed, not below speed.
I'm not sure what you mean about the 'spool up' required on final. Approach idle is designed to meet/exceed the mandated 8 second accel time. On a normal approach, it never comes into play because with gear and landing flaps, the airplane is so draggy that maintaining airspeed and glideslope requires above idle thrust.
Yes, the guys driving when we're doing flight testing are good stick and rudder - and airspeed is generally spot on. Being 20 or 30 knots slow would certainly affect the go-around performance - short of a sim session I'm not sure how to quantify that. But, I do know that on a twin, after they push TOGA and those engines spool up, the airplane accelerates and climbs
fast (I'm generally standing behind the observers seat - I make damn sure I'm hanging on to something)!
According to the reports, someone on the flight deck verbalized 'airspeed' 7 seconds prior to impact. My point is that, had they performed the go-around and firewalled the throttles then, rather than 5.5 seconds later, I doubt there would have been an impact and we wouldn't be having this discussion.