Comment by manquer

That doesn’t mean the cockpit will burn .

The wings hosts the engine and a good portion of the fuel is quite a bit back from the nose in a big plane like 787. The engines lost power and hit just 180 knots just 4 seconds after the plan lifted off. The plane could have just easily broken up differently where the nose crashed in a different spot than where the fire would likely start.

At such a slow speed and altitude they could even have well crashed inside the airport perimeter and got a quicker/ better emergency response from the fire units at the airport.

Attempting this during takeoff or landing when the pilot monitoring is fully engaged and closely observing would be most difficult to execute .