Or it was just much less distance to get to the ground? Pilot aborted landing and instead of a full circle around the airport following traffic pattern went for an immediate 180 to land.
GA folks call that "the impossible turn" when you're talking about engine failure on takeoff, mostly because it's the only engine and you don't have enough speed/altitude/energy to safely do a 180 and line back up on the runway.
In this case, Pilot had one mostly-working engine but unknown levels of damage to flaps and gear (or hydraulics), so staying in the air wasn't impossible but you sure as hell do NOT want to spend any more time in the air than you have to.
I think I'd end up doing the same, opting for an immediate 180 instead of following traffic pattern.
This is where I think the opinion of a commercial pilot would be of interest.
I've has some training in accident response and doctrine for high consequence accidents though not directly involved in aviation, and one of the key things I've seen is a doctrine of deliberate response. A common theme in historic incidents is operators taking actions that were incorrect or sub-optimal believing that they were taking the right actions, and these actions actually making the casualty worse. Generally this is a result of perceived time criticality, when almost invariably a more delayed but better considered action would have been better.
To mitigate this, doctrine emphasizes controlled considered response with appropriate resource management. Immediate actions are still taken as needed, but once in and interim stable situation, operators should then pause for evaluation and planning follow on actions.
Applied to this case, I would expect them to have been trained to put the aircraft in a stable position (shut down failed engine, increase power to a slow climb rate, declare emergency, etc.) and then to execute a deliberate pause for evaluation and discussion before attempting landing. There is no reason to think they wouldn't have had sufficient fuel for a decent amount of flight time, and all evidence indicates the remaining engine and control systems were functioning correctly and there was no fire, injury or structural damage that would necessitate an immediate landing.
To me, once the situation was stable, remaining in the air was the safest option for the near term. Conversely, trying for an immediate landing has considerable risk.
This assumes there's no known problem that would cause progressive loss of airworthiness - fire, hydraulic leak, 2nd engine damage, etc.
Looking at it from the pilot's perspective, they knew, or should have known they were landing in a really poor configuration, and that this was likely to result in something like what actually happened. The only way this seems justified is if they had reason to believe the aircraft was going to fall out of the sky if they didn't land right now, and it's difficult to reconcile that with the apparent aircraft condition and indication they should have had (i.e., controllable, one engine works, no apparent structural damage or evidence of fire).
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