All very strange.
No end of bookings cancelled ( 68,000?) and it was a Boeing !
How did the two cabin crew survive? Were they sitting with their backs to the front.?
The aircraft manufacturer is completely irrelevant. The aircraft was 15 years old and used to belong to Ryanair. Not that that is particularly relevant either, it could have easily been an Airbus A320 and the result would have been the same.
As to the crew surviving, facing rearwards is a large part of it.
Basically the tail section that remained intact is very specifically arranged. From the back you have:
1. The pressure bulkhead.
2. The galley structure bolted to the floor and fuselage.
3. The rear doors in their reinforced frames.
4. The two rear facing crew seats, one each side bolted to the floor and bulkhead.
5. Separate bulkhead either side bolted to the floor, fuselage and toilet structures.
6. Two toilet structures bolted to the floor and fuselage.
7. The rest of the aircraft.
Where the tail structure separated, was immediately ahead of the toilets. Basically the nose smashed through the berm stopping almost instantly. The rest of the aircraft broke apart as it compressed into the back of the nose section.
The deceleration from the final impact would have killed everyone pretty much instantly for what it's worth, And the recovery team have a horrific task ahead of them with 30 rows of seats stacked together. Anyone identifiable would have been sat towards the rear.
The crew that survived were attached to a rigid bulkhead by four point harnesses and as long as all the galley equipment was restrained correctly, then they were reasonably well protected. Also the deceleration forces would have been much lower at the tail thanks to 95ft of compression absorbing the impact. The most dangerous thing for them would have been if someone had successfully opened the rear doors due to the way that the evacuation slides work on the 737. Had they been forward facing they would have been sat behind the door line so would have still had protection from the structure around the doors, ie nothing immediately Infront to impact against.
If it was still configured as Ryanair ordered it, then the front crew would have been sat facing the passeges with no bulkhead, if there was a bulkhead in place they might have survived the impact and stood a chance.
Looking at the crash site photos, the nose section survived quite well considering, as the front doors are still attached to the flight deck, and on the Ryanair spec 737s they have built in stairs, so that front area is reinforced compared to aircraft without the stairs.