Sonali Tiwary
New information from the flight data recorder aboard the crashed Amazon Air Boeing 767-300 paints a detailed picture of what happened in the cockpit before the cargo jet skidded off the runway at Miami International Airport, killing 5 people. The sequence captured on the black box suggests the pilots may have tried to abort the landing before the jet overtook the runway.
Thirty seconds before the recording ended, as the plane was going more than 180 mph, two of the landing gears touched down on the runway. The third set of landing gear, on the back left, didn’t touch down until nine seconds later. Aircraft are designed to touch down with back wheels first.
Fifteen seconds before the recording ended, as the plane was traveling nearly 140 mph, the brakes on the wheels were released and the throttles were moved to full take-off power. Four seconds later, the throttles were brought back to idle and the brakes reapplied. It is not clear why this sequence of events happened.
“That kind of hesitation is deadly in a runway like this,” said Attorney Pablo Rojas, an aviation expert familiar with Boeing who considered the data NTSB investigators released Tuesday night.
The NTSB recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the tail of the crashed jet and successfully accessed the data at their lab in Washington. More than 400 streams of data were captured by the black boxes. Investigators said Wednesday they will interview the pilots, Joseph Carol and Jaime Silva, and 21 Air’s assistant chief pilot.
“There were no indications that speed brakes or thrust reversers were deployed during the incident,” the NTSB noted. Both systems are designed to help slow a plane.
Five died and five were injured after the jet operating as Prime Air Flight 798 for Amazon hurtled past the end of the runway and slammed into a van full of cleaning workers, an airport fence, concrete vehicle barriers, and an SUV before finally stopping and catching fire.
