A pilot aboard the Amazon Prime Air cargo plane that crashed at Miami International Airport warned that the aircraft was traveling “too fast” more than a minute before landing, according to an initial investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The Boeing 767, operated by Miami-based 21 Air, veered off the runway Sunday and traveled approximately 396 meters before striking vehicles on the ground.
The plane first hit a van carrying five employees of an aircraft-cleaning company, killing all of them. It then struck an SUV, slid across a public road and burst into flames.
Five additional people were injured, including two who were critically wounded. Both pilots survived and were questioned by investigators on Wednesday.
According to the cockpit voice recordings, one of the pilots repeatedly warned his colleague for nearly two minutes that the plane was approaching too quickly. Automatic warnings also sounded in the cockpit, but the aircraft continued toward the runway.
It remains unclear which pilot was the captain. The other pilot reportedly did not provide a clear verbal response to the repeated warnings.
The preliminary investigation found that the “sink rate, sink rate” warning sounded twice before the aircraft touched down. At one point, the plane descended approximately 120 meters in just four seconds.
Five additional “too low terrain” warnings were then heard.
Fifteen seconds after touching down, one of the pilots called for a rejected landing, and the throttles were advanced to a setting consistent with an attempted go-around. However, the aircraft was already nearing the end of the runway and was still traveling at approximately 222 kilometers per hour, according to Flightradar24 data.
Four seconds later, the throttles were returned to idle. Investigators then heard sounds consistent with the plane leaving the paved runway.
The NTSB said there was no indication in the recorded data that the spoilers or thrust reversers were deployed to help slow the plane.
Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation safety consultant, said the major question is why the pilots continued with the landing despite multiple indications that the approach was unstable.
“They had several clues that their approach was unstable, but they continued instead of rejecting the landing,” Brickhouse said.
He described the incident as a possible failure in crew resource management, which trains pilots to communicate clearly and coordinate decisions in the cockpit.
“When a pilot ignores signs that something is wrong, unfortunately, bad things happen,” Brickhouse said. “As an investigator, I want to know: When so many warnings were available, what was their motivation? What was their thought process? Why did they continue the approach instead of rejecting it?”
Mike O’Donnell, a former senior Federal Aviation Administration official, said the crew had several options to slow the plane after the first warning, including deploying the spoilers, reducing the throttles and lowering the landing gear.
The pilots could also have rejected the landing, circled around and attempted another approach.
“You have plenty of time to slow down and plenty of time to decide to reject the landing two minutes before it happens,” O’Donnell said.
Other aviation experts likewise said the pilots should have abandoned the landing while still in the air.
Steve Arroyo, an airline pilot and former safety expert, said the recording suggested a lack of teamwork in the cockpit. He questioned whether the pilot flying the aircraft was too focused on landing to properly respond to the speed warnings.
“Where was the coordination? Where was the leadership in the cockpit? And where was the compliance with the professional procedures outlined in the company’s flight manual?” Arroyo asked.
Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, questioned whether the pilot at the controls was the more senior captain while the less experienced copilot issued the warnings.
She said the junior pilot may not have been assertive enough in challenging the approach.
The Amazon crash was the second cargo-plane crash in the United States in less than a year. In November, a UPS cargo plane crashed at Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky, after losing an engine while accelerating for takeoff.
All three pilots and 12 people on the ground were killed in that crash, while 23 others were injured.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
