Rainboe please don't give me words which are not mines. On the contrary of what you pretend, I'm not judging since as you mentioned i don't have any experience on such heavy aircrafts. But as you are congratulating the crew, you must have some good reasons which I'm just asking you to explain to me. I know the subject is sensitive and I'm really trying to express myself without irritating anybody.
As you said, heavy machines have inertia, meaning it's more difficult to change their path. I never said they should have pushed the nose into a steep dive, but what is sure according to their IAS and VS, is that they had a very steep angle probably resulting from an important loss of lift. I'm not elaborating on what they should have done but I'm just wondering if they simply had time to understand the situation and react accordingly. I'd believe most common pilots' reactions would have been to disconnect the AP before reaching a very dangerous 108 kts, this is why I feel they were taken by surprise.
I understand the inertia thing, but i still feel like a 120 IAS would give more flare authority to control the final fpm than at 108...
As I told Rainboe in PM, I used to perform a lot of dead stick landing training during my previous military career (one hour every two months over 10 years), that's why I'm so interested in this technical energy management issue.
In plain language:
1- I would appreciate if those who congratulate the crew for their action could politely elaborate on what precise actions they are referring to since as a simple unexperienced corporate pilot I don't have the thousands of cruise hours to understand the specific handling of heavy machines.
2- I share my feeling that the crew may have been surprised by the situation since I feel a normal reaction would have been to take control of the aircraft before the AP pulls on the nose till a dangerous 108 kts.
If some people here are convinced they would definitely have let the AP on even at 108 kts, they are more than welcome to explain me the reason of such a decision since I may learn something very important for my future experience. You can eventually consider this as an off BA038 related question since it concerns general handling.
Thank you very much for keeping a fair a and polite dialog even if some people may feel I didn't reach the technical maturity to post in this topic.