“All big commmercial and a lot of small commercial planes have a small jet engine on the very tip of the rear fuselage, called an APU, Auxiliary Power Unit.”
....tonight on “60 minutes” the pilot stated that he was able to get the APU started and that gave him some control....he never did get the big engines restarted however....they just wouldn’t fire up....so basically he had a dead stick landing.
The APU doesn’t provide useful thrust, only useful hydraulics, which in this case gave the pilot all his control surfaces and the ability to maneuver the plane to the softest, slowest, levelest, and best possible landing.