How to program Cyclone10GX development kit PFL NOR flash?

A customer is having problems programming the Numonyx flash (MT28EW01GABA1LPC) on the Cyclone10 GX development kit.

The Max10 PFL design appears to function correctly until the customer tries to program a .pof file to address 0x0. Configuring the C10GX via FPP naturally fails, since there is no valid data in the flash.

Using the quartus_pgm from command line provides more information about progress, and we can see it successfully deletes all the flash sectors from 0x0 to 0x0FFC0000.

First attempt of programming data into the flash at 0x0 fails with the following message:

Info (209005): Programming status: programming flash device 1 (Numonyx 28F00AM29EW) at device chain position 1

Info (209005): Programming status: programming flash memory at byte address 0x00000000

Error (209012): Operation failed

The .pof file is created with Quartus Prime Pro 19.1 using the following parameters:

CFI_2Gb, Passive Parallel x16

Any ideas on what may be wrong and what to check ?