They simply would not have taken off without the necessary airspeed if they tried to take off at flight idle. It wouldn't have been too difficult to abort the takeoff if that was the case.
I understand that they did the full power take off, but the engines were not responding to any input. Finally three of the engines responded to the input of the pilots setting at flight idle. Unfortunately, the power setting was then "frozen" at flight idle.
Its an older article...
Power to three of the engines froze after takeoff and “didn’t respond to the crew’s attempts to control the power setting in the normal way,” Airbus said. The fourth engine operated as normal.
The crew made several attempts to reduce power after takeoff without success. When they set power to “flight idle,” the thrust setting again became stuck, Airbus said. That left the three engines operating at insufficient power and the crew unable to return to the Seville airport from which they had departed. Airbus said “all other aircraft systems performed normally.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/airbus-a400 ... 1433327924
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