Originally Posted by
Tay Cough
Logical but that still doesn't explain why:
1) Thrust was reduced during the manoeuvre
One thought I'd had for that was he thought he had too much energy and was fine tuning the pullup to make the gate; the implication being that he either remembered the wrong gate height, or misread the altimeter by 1000ft. Fine tuning to hit the wrong height precisely; somewhat akin to the gross error in the hubble space telescope.
This is pure speculation of course; we still have no way of knowing if the thrust changes were actually commanded by the pilot. But I can't think of any reason you'd intentionally reduce thrust on the way up unless you thought you'd have too much height/speed at the apex.