Firstly, congratulations to the crew for making such a successful forced landing that everyone survived with only a few minor injuries reported. Indeed, some passengers didn’t even know they’d been in a crash. The evacuation appears to have been copybook; perhaps that alone fully vindicates the airline’s policy of cabin crew salary scales which encourage ‘career’, highly professional, cabin crew?
Regrettably, there has been a lot of nonsense posted on this website and sifting through the garbage has taken quite a time. Thanks to those who provided factual description of the forced landing, that alone has narrowed the possibilities. Drunken aussie pranskters and off-the-wall wild-ass-guesses haven’t helped.
PJ2, I think your line of investigation is very probably close to the mark. Has it yet been established whether the engines were at idle thrust – or had flamed out. In very gusty conditions, if the automatic throttle system (sorry, I don’t know the Boeing term) detects – for whatever reason – a significant excursion well above the target speed, how much authority does the system have and is the gain rate sufficient to command both engines to idle thrust at a rate which might be difficult for the crew to react to in the last few moments of a very long flight? If the engines were commanded to idle thrust at 400 ft in an unusual weather situation, how long does it take to take over manually and recover the situation in unpredictable, gusty conditions?
These are questions, NOT speculation.
Again, very many congratulations to the crew for their highly professional actions.