[Hulka]

“From seeing the video and hearing some of the recent speed reports, I am putting money on that the crew fell asleep and woke too low and too slow. The pLane was in full stall and when they tries more power and a pull up they were too close to the ground so they tail in, belly crunch and then wing roll. It is a classic case”

That is about the most, not to be rude, inventive and humorous explanation heard to date.

Thanks.

[UCANSEE2]

And unbelievable. The pilot had been talking to the tower. He wasn’t asleep.

[BatGuano]

Whatever happened in the last 100’ or so, was caused by excess altitude and speed when they started the approach. I believe they were at least 500’ high and 40-50 kts fast. The 777 is very difficult to slow down once you start to descend on the glide path. If you are high and trying to converge or catch up to the profile/visual glide path, you accelerate and then exceed flap speeds. It was an unstabilized approach and should have been abandoned long before reaching the runway environment.

It (777)is just too clean and those 90,000lb thrust engines are still producing some thrust in idle or residual thrust if they are reduced too late.

[BatGuano]

It is very possible that the throttles were in idle below 500’ and the pilot realized that he wasn't going to make it too late. It takes an eternity for those big PW 4090’s to spool up and produce thrust required to initiate a go around.
(Eternity)= 7 or 8 seconds. But with speed decaying and no thrust to speak of, his late rotation (raising the nose) only changed the attitude that he was going to contact water, rocks, runway etc. He was cooked from the start.
My guess is that all of the pilots were in the cockpit and the primary crew was at the controls. It will be very interesting to hear what is said on the Cockpit Voice Recorder. May have to have it translated..

[Nifster]

You apparently have never seen what happens to planes (even fighter jets) that are too close to the ground when stalled