A pilot of the Amazon cargo plane in Miami crash warned it was coming in too fast. For nearly two minutes, one of the pilots repeatedly warned their counterpart that the Boeing 767 was going too fast as it approached the runway and after touchdown. The fellow pilot never gave “a consistent verbal response” to the warnings, according to a summary of cockpit voice recordings released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The plane touched down awkwardly, briefly attempted to take off, and then smashed into a van carrying workers at a plane cleaning company. All five people in the van died.
The Crash Sequence
The Amazon cargo plane came in fast on Sunday afternoon and barreled roughly 1,300 feet (396 meters) past the end of the runway in Miami. It smashed into the van before hitting a compact SUV as it slid across a public road and caught fire.
Five others were hurt, including two who remained in critical condition on Tuesday. The two pilots survived and were interviewed Wednesday by investigators.
Flight data recorder information released late Tuesday shows how unsteady the plane was as it came in to land amid strong winds. The pilots briefly disengaged the brakes and shoved the throttles up as if they were trying to take off again and retry the landing. They abandoned that attempt just four seconds later.
The cockpit audio recordings also captured a series of automated warnings from the plane about the speed of descent and the approaching terrain.
Pilots Had Time to Correct or Abandon
At the point when the pilot first called out the speed problem, former FAA official Mike O’Donnell said the crew could have done a number of things to slow the plane down. That includes extending the spoilers, cutting the throttles and lowering the landing gear. Or the pilots could have simply aborted the landing and circled to try again.
“You have plenty of time to slow down, plenty of time to say, let’s just do a go-around at two minutes out,” said O’Donnell, who used to oversee airport safety and crash investigations.
The plane was well down the runway when its right and nose landing gear first touched down, reducing how much distance remained to stop. Strong winds at the airport as storms moved in may have created a tail wind that helped propel the plane forward.
Tracking site Flightradar24 estimated based on the NTSB data that the plane was nearly halfway down the 9,360-foot runway when it first touched down.
O’Donnell said the terrain warnings reinforce that the plane was unsteady and suggest it may not have been configured correctly for landing.
| Event | Time/Detail |
|---|---|
| Repeated speed warnings from pilot | Nearly two minutes during approach and after touchdown |
| Touchdown point | Nearly halfway down the 9,360-foot runway |
| Distance past runway end | Roughly 1,300 feet (396 meters) |
| Aborted go-around attempt | Lasted four seconds |
| Crash impact | Van carrying workers, then a compact SUV |
Experts Question Cockpit Teamwork
Several experts have said the pilots should have aborted that landing while the plane was still in the air and circled around to retry it.
Former airline pilot and safety expert Steve Arroyo said the details released Wednesday show a lack of teamwork in the cockpit. He suggested the pilot at the controls may have been too focused on the landing to acknowledge the speed warnings.
“Where’s the coordination? Where’s the leadership here in terms of managing the flight deck? And following the trained guidelines set forth in the company’s flight manual?” Arroyo questioned.
Mary Schiavo, a former Inspector General of the Transportation Department, said she wonders if the pilot at the controls was the more senior captain while the less experienced first officer called out the warnings “and the junior pilot was not aggressive in challenging.”
The full transcript of the cockpit conversation will not be released until later in the investigation.
The Plane and the Operator
The 32-year-old Boeing 767 was originally built to carry passengers. It flew for several airlines in foreign countries for more than two decades before being converted to a cargo plane in 2015, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
The final flight was operated by 21 Air, a cargo carrier based in North Carolina that has been flying packages for Amazon since 2024.
NTSB investigators were expected to review the jet’s ownership history, weather conditions at the airport, maintenance records and operations by 21 Air.
| Aircraft and Operator | Details |
|---|---|
| Aircraft | Boeing 767, 32 years old |
| Original role | Passenger plane |
| Cargo conversion | 2015 |
| Operator | 21 Air, based in North Carolina |
| Amazon contract | Flying packages since 2024 |
A Second Cargo Jet Crash in Less Than a Year
The Miami crash is the second crash of a cargo jet in the U.S. in less than a year. A UPS plane crashed after losing its engine while accelerating down the runway at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport in October. That crash killed all three pilots and 12 people on the ground. Twenty-three more were injured.
Investigators will consider everything that may have been a factor in the Miami crash, from the plane’s configuration to the weather to how the pilots worked together.
The five victims were all in the van. The two pilots survived the crash and were interviewed Wednesday by investigators.
The NTSB’s investigation is ongoing.
Source: npr.org
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