Well, it's obviously not a technical term, though I expect every pilot knows what it means. Basically very slow, bordering on the stall, but with minimal rate of descent. Not far off where the aircraft is when landing, though even slower. Explains the survivability. Very little vertical speed to do nasty things, and the forward speed is only 200 kph (!), so as long as you don't hit anything really solid....Could you elaborate on the technical term 'mushed', please jb? I'm guessing you mean a pancake encounter with terrain, as opposed to a violent steep impact?
As always, it's a combination of things. For whatever reason, the aircraft has been allowed to become far too slow. The engines are spooled down to flight idle, and take a number of seconds to accelerate. So, when they've realised they're too low and slow, the engines don't respond quickly. No speed to trade off... I don't know how the 737 would behave with gear up and landing flap selected, but generally once you get to a landing configuration, the minimum idle increases substantially, to help avoid the power lag as you wait for engines to respond.What did they do wrong? To what degree did it appear to be poor aviating?
A downhill slope reduces the effective sink rate, making the impact a bit more gentle, and survivable.
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