A photo of the aircraft just before it landed (see below) shows no deployment of the thrust reverser panels. I can only assume that the rumour arose because the panels were not in place when the aircraft came to rest. In fact they were ripped off when the engines hit the ground.
Discussion of the crash on the forum of Airliners.net has now reached nearly 1800 posts, and I've read several hundred of them over the past week. The current consensus there seems to be that the engines were under power, but probably at quite a low level of thrust, all the way to the ground.
Something caused the thrust not to be increased, even when the thrust levers were manually operated by the pilots. There are various theories and rumours about what could have caused this to happen to both engines simultaneously, but we'll have to wait for the AAIB interim report, expected within the next month.
Some new photos have just been released, taken by an off-duty airport employee, David Spalton. The Sun and Daily Mail either published them on Wednesday or will do so today (Thursday). The photos below are on the Daily Mail website.
The first photo shows the plane coming in very low, but not as close to the house as it appears (the house is about 200 metres away from the flight path). The second photo shows the plane actually sliding along the grass. Click on the photos for a larger image.
