According to flight information released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), one of the pilots aboard an Amazon cargo jet flying into Miami International Airport repeatedly cautioned his co-pilot that the aircraft was approaching at excessive speed for nearly two minutes before the plane crashed on Sunday.
The Boeing aircraft, operating as Prime Air Flight 7598, overran the runway and struck a van carrying five workers from an airport cleaning company. All five passengers in the van perished, and five others were injured, including two who remained in critical condition. Both pilots survived the incident and were interviewed by investigators on Wednesday.
A summary of cockpit voice recordings indicates that while the pilot called out the speed issues, his counterpart never provided a consistent verbal response. The data recorder shows the plane landing unsteadily amid strong winds. After touching down awkwardly, the crew briefly disengaged the brakes and advanced the throttles in an apparent attempt to go around, but aborted the maneuver just four seconds later.
Former FAA official Mike O’Donnell noted that the crew had ample opportunity to slow the aircraft or abort the landing. “You have plenty of time to slow down, plenty of time to say, let’s just do a go-around at two minutes out,” O’Donnell said, suggesting actions such as extending spoilers, cutting throttles, or lowering landing gear could have prevented the overrun.
Flightradar24 estimated that the plane touched down roughly halfway down the 9,360-foot runway. It then traveled an additional 1,300 feet before striking the van and a compact SUV on a public road, where it caught fire. Automated cockpit warnings about descent speed and terrain were also recorded, reinforcing concerns that the aircraft was not correctly configured for landing.
The full transcript of the cockpit conversation is expected to be released later in the investigation.
This adds up to serious crew resource management failure. The warnings were clear, but nobody seemed to be working together to stop the plane.
Two minutes is an eternity in aviation. The NTSB needs to dig deep into why the crew failed to execute a simple go-around.
As a former pilot, I can confirm this was a classic stabilized approach gone wrong. They had every chance to go around.
Wait, they disengaged brakes and advanced throttles only to abort four seconds later? That sounds like pure panic rather than training.
It is absolutely terrifying that the co-pilot didn’t respond consistently. That lack of communication likely cost five innocent lives.