Don't want to make any point at all regarding the correctness of the crews' actions.
Just to chuck in a couple of points about glide speeds.
Michaelmarsh says:
hang on to CLmax (the edge of stick-shake)
This will give a very high R.O.D. in the glide. It works in windshear or terrain avoidance situations because of the thrust vector in a nose up situation.
Min. sink is at about 1.1 to 1.2 Vs.
But here we are after best glide ratio, which is at about 1.3 to 1.5 Vs.
Lluke says:
it probably wouldn't make sense to dive to the best glide speed
Vref is close to 1.3 Vs so you are right there.
Glad I wasn't...