Oh, and the A/T was not 'put' in HOLD - it put itself there.
Not quite. Because of what the pilots told the A/T to do, it started advancing the throttle - the pilot grabbed the throttles and manually overrode the A/T to put them to idle
which puts the A/T into HOLD.
I hear "the pilots need the choice" - well, they plainly are not up to it, are they?
If the pilots are not up to the task of flying an airplane on a nearly perfect summer day, they are not qualified to be pilots. No amount of automation can fix that.