A pilot aboard an Amazon Air cargo jet that ran off a Miami runway, triggering a crash that left five people dead, warned in the final moments that the plane was traveling “too fast,” newly released cockpit transcript details show.
The National Transportation Safety Board released portions of the cockpit voice recorder transcript on Wednesday, offering a clearer picture of the tense seconds leading up to the September 6 runway accident.
According to the NTSB, one of the pilots called for a “go around” as the aircraft was attempting to land, signaling an effort to abandon the approach. Flight data indicated that the brakes were released and the throttles advanced just 15 seconds before impact.
Investigators said the pilot warned that the aircraft’s speed was too high for a safe landing, but the alarm came only moments before the crash. Five seconds later, the plane struck the ground and veered off the runway.
The cargo plane then broke through a fence and slammed into a van belonging to an airline cleaning company, killing all five workers inside. Authorities identified the victims as Rolando Aleman, 55, Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53, Julio C Pineda, 75, Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53, and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47.
While the NTSB has not made the full cockpit recording public, officials said Wednesday that the pilot continued to make comments about the aircraft’s excessive speed during the remaining seconds captured before the deadly runway crash.
The pilots involved were identified earlier this week as Jaime Felipe Silva Molina and Joseph Carroll. Both survived the crash, and NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said they were questioned by investigators after being released from the hospital with minor injuries.
Details from those interviews have not been disclosed. Federal investigators continue to examine what led to the fatal Amazon Air crash in Miami.
The pilots on board the aircraft were named as Jaime Felipe Silva Molina (left) and Joseph Carroll (right). They survived the crash
The pilot of an Amazon Air cargo plane that overran a Miami runway and killed five people urgently warned the aircraft was going ‘too fast’ moments before the disaster, cockpit audio revealed
The pilot cautioned that they were going ‘too fast’ to make a safe landing, but the panicked call came too late, and the aircraft crashed and veered off the runway and crashed into a van, killing five people
The NTSB said on Wednesday that evidence suggests the pilots of the aircraft knew they had botched the landing moments before the crash, but left it too late to perform a ‘go around’ and re-try the landing.
Alongside one of the pilots making multiple warnings that they were going ‘too fast’, electronic systems on board the plane also blared several warnings beginning a minute before the crash, officials said.
Chihoon Shin, the lead investigator into the crash, said at a press conference that the plane was traveling at 182mph when its nose landing gear first touched down.
The pilots did not apply the brakes for another seven seconds, and the left-side of the main landing gear did not touch the runway for another four seconds.
The data showed that the pilots severely botched the landing, Michael O’Donnell, a former Federal Aviation Administration investigator, told the New York Times, describing the touchdown sequence as ‘really bad.’
‘The nose should not hit first,’ he explained. ‘That is an unstable approach right there, and that really tells me that the go-around should have been executed a lot sooner, and they weren’t in total control of the aircraft.’
The NTSB said on Wednesday that evidence suggests the pilots of the aircraft knew they had botched the landing moments before the crash, but left it too late to perform a ‘go around’ and re-try the landing
The aircraft crashed through a fence and into a van owned by an airline cleaning company, killing all five workers inside the van
The NTSB data showed that 15 seconds before the audio cut off in the crash, the plane’s brakes released and the throttles increased, indicating that the pilots attempted to reverse the landing at the last second and attempt the ‘go-around.’
At that moment, the plane was moving at 138mph, Shin said, and the ‘throttles increased to values consistent with go-around thrust.’
Shin said the pilots did not re-apply the brakes until 11 seconds before the recording cut off, and they allegedly never deployed the aircraft’s speed brakes or thrust reversers, both of which could have helped slow the plane.
Homendy said that investigators are still looking into how close to the end of the runway the plane was at these moments, and that is ‘something we still have to determine.’
O’Donnell told the Times that the plane would have been moving at roughly 200 feet per second during those crucial final seconds when the brakes were released.
‘If you do the math, that’s a lot of runway that went by while they were doing that,’ he said.
The Boeing 767 slammed into two vehicles as it tried to land on the tarmac on Sunday
Shin said that when the recorder stopped and the plane crashed, the aircraft was still moving at 75mph.
Steven Arroyo, an aviation expert and retired United Airlines pilot, told the Times that the newly released audio timeline suggests there was indecision or confusion in the cockpit over whether to abort the landing at the last moment.
‘You either land or you go around,’ Arroyo said.
‘You don’t land, attempt to go around and then get back to landing again, unless there was some mechanical malfunction.’
