Maybe you need to look at the reports again OA because its obvious that your memory is not reliable. You make it sound as though landing a 737 off an RNAV approach with the cloud base and visibility well below the minima, is just a walk in the park.
Basically any aircraft in a controlled descent will land in a survivable manner.
Ever flown a 737? They also require a hard surface. If they had been just a small fraction off the hard stuff the outcome may have been very different. Plenty of jets have had gear collapse when colliding with runway lights.
The big difference in the weather is the Virgin crew had fog and the Norfolk crew did not. You might want to re-read the Mildura report. It was mid-morning and it was not a thin layer of fog.
The Norfolk crew had visibility below the cloud base and a Unicom operator on the ground who was giving them real time info on the weather.
The pilot would not have had even the faintest indication of where the ground was.
Once again read the report. The Westwind was fitted with a radio altimeter. They used it to work out where the water was. They could also have used it to get closer to the ground and get below the cloud base having first set up a 3degree slope using the V/S function of the autopilot. I don't believe that ditching was the only course of action.
I do work in a well lit airconditioned office but its not that big, it does however travel at 3/4 the speed of sound.