The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has announced plans to conduct interviews with the two pilots who survived the recent crash of an Amazon cargo jet in Miami. According to NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy, the cockpit voice recorder retrieved from the aircraft captured over two hours of clear audio data, which will be analyzed after the pilots provide their firsthand testimonies.
During a briefing, NTSB investigator Chihoon Shin disclosed that the flight data recording indicated the nose landing gear and right main landing gear touched down 30 seconds before the end of the recording, followed by the left main landing gear touching down 19 seconds before. Shin also noted that shortly after, the brakes were released, and the throttles were adjusted for a go-around thrust, with no evidence of speed brakes or thrust reversers being activated.
The tragic incident resulted in the death of five individuals on the ground when the jet overshot the runway during landing, colliding with a van on airport premises before crashing through a fence and impacting an SUV on a nearby city street. The deceased, identified by the Miami-Dade sheriff, included individuals from Professional Ocean Service Corp., a plane cleaning company, whose families have been deeply affected by the loss.
The mangled vehicles involved in the crash, along with the Amazon cargo jet, which displayed a visible soot mark near its Prime Air logo, remained at the crash site for investigation. The flight, operated by 21 Air, a North Carolina-based cargo carrier, had originated from Puerto Rico and encountered stormy conditions upon landing in Miami.
Despite the absence of a runway excursion system at Miami’s airport, deemed compliant with safety regulations due to its substantial runway buffer, NTSB officials have kept two runways closed for investigative purposes. The Boeing 767 aircraft involved in the crash, converted to a cargo plane in 2015 after serving as a passenger carrier for over two decades, will undergo thorough examination as part of the ongoing investigation.
