Lauren Rosenblatt
The Seattle Times
(TNS)

The Amazon cargo plane that overran a runway at Miami International Airport Sunday, killing five people and injuring five others, did not deploy two critical systems meant to slow an airplane after landing, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

There was no indication that the plane’s thrust reversers or speed brakes had deployed before the 767 skidded off the end of the Miami runway, the NTSB’s investigator in charge for this accident, Chihoon Shin, said at a news briefing Tuesday evening.

Shin was providing initial data points from the aircraft’s flight data recorder and cautioned it was too soon to determine what those data points indicated and why the thrust reversers and speed brakes had not been deployed.

“Right now, I’m not going to speculate about what should have been,” Shin said. “We have an aircraft performance study; we’re going to do that. Was it normal? Was it not? What was working? What was not? I’m not going to speculate.”

The flight data recorder also showed that, about 15 seconds before the end of the aircraft’s recording, the plane’s throttle “increased to values consistent with go-around thrust,” Shin said.

A “go-around” is when the pilots choose to bring the plane back up, circle and attempt a landing again, if they do not feel they can land safely on the original attempt. In the days since the fatal crash, many aviation safety experts have wondered why the pilots continued to land the aircraft instead of performing a go-around.

On Tuesday, NTSB investigators said they had obtained audio from inside the cockpit during the plane’s landing and final moments but did not release the transcript.

Investigators plan to interview the two pilots Wednesday to gain a better understanding of what was happening inside and what actions the pilots may have taken.

“What we need to do is talk to the crew to understand how they were manipulating the controls,” Shin said. “With the cockpit voice recorder, while we have that data, crew accounts and crew interviews will help fill in some of the blanks for us.”

The plane, a 32-year-old Boeing 767 that started as a passenger plane before being converted to a freighter, was carrying more than 32,000 pounds of cargo, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said Tuesday. Most of that cargo was contact lenses.

Operated by cargo carrier 21 Air on behalf of Amazon, the plane overran a runway as it was returning from a flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The plane struck “navigational aids,” pushed through fences and collided with two vehicles: a white Ford van transporting employees of an airline cleaning company and a Toyota Corolla Cross traveling on a road outside the airport.

The five people who died were inside the van belonging to the cleaning company, Professional Ocean Service Corporation.

On Tuesday, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office released the identities of those who had been killed. The victims were 55-year-old Rolando Aleman Leon, 53-year-old Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 75-year-old Julio C. Pineda, 53-year-old Carlos Acosta Fajardo and 47-year-old Javierkys Reyes Quevedo.

Two people who were injured remain in critical condition, 79-year-old Eugenio Corredor, who was traveling in the passenger vehicle outside the airport, and 32-year-old Ridoel Averhoff Diaz, who was in the cleaning company’s van.

Another van passenger, 36-year-old Roosevelt Sebastin Perdomo Torres, was also injured and is now stable.

Captain Joseph Carol, 55, and first officer Jaime Felipe Silva Molina, 37, sustained minor injuries and have been released from the hospital.

Carol received his type rating for the 767 in May and had 7,145 total flight hours, Homendy said Tuesday evening. Molina received his type rating for the 767 in April 2025 and had 2,655 hours.

From videos and photos of the crash, it appears the aircraft landed long and faster than normal, leading to what pilots call an “unstable approach,” Shawn Pruchnicki, a professor at Ohio State University, pilot and former accident investigator, said in an interview ahead of the NTSB’s Tuesday evening news briefing.

A “stabilized approach” occurs when the aircraft is coming in at the correct speed, correct descent rate, on the right glide path, with all components configured properly and generally all working as it should.

An “unstable approach,” then, happens whenever one of those things isn’t quite right. The aircraft could be going too fast, could be too close to the part on the runway where the aircraft should land or could be too high in the air.

Usually, if pilots are landing with an unstable approach, they’ll perform a go-around, Pruchnicki said. In this case, it's too soon to know why the pilots did not perform a go-around or what else was going on in the cockpit, with the plane or with external factors, like the wind speed and direction.

“We have to keep in mind that accidents are never the result of one single factor,” Pruchnicki said. “It's usually from an amalgamation of lots of little factors that all come together.

“The pilots are playing a big role, but we’re just going to have to wait to see what all of the pieces of the puzzle are.”

In a readout of the final 30 seconds of the plane’s flight data recorder, Shin said the plane was traveling at 181 mph when its nose landing gear and right main landing gear touched down. Eleven seconds later, the plane’s left main landing gear touched down and the plane was traveling at 154 mph.

With 15 seconds left in the recording, throttle increased to values consistent with go-around thrust.

With 11 seconds remaining, throttle reduced and the brakes were reapplied.

The plane’s final ground speed was 74 mph.

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