[E. Pluribus Unum]

At 500 feet altitude I don’t believe the pilot had time to do much of anything other than try to keep the plane in the air.

[frog in a pot]

At 500 feet altitude I don’t believe the pilot had time to do much of anything other than try to keep the plane in the air.

Agreed. And during the time that was available to fly the plane and analyze the WTF unbelievable, subtract any conversations he had on the radio with the mayday transmission. Tough spot to be in real-time, even if one is fully trained.

[Spktyr]

About all the flight crew had time to do was retract the flaps to glide as far as they could while looking for the least damaging/populated site to try to set down. If they'd left the flaps up, it would probably have crashed a lot sooner than it did and there are a lot of populated buildings to hit in that area. It appears the flight crew picked the best of a host of bad choices and tried to bring it down in a park (or the waste ground beyond it) to minimize ground casualties; honor to them for that, if so.