The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released the initial data extracted from the black boxes of the Amazon Prime Air plane that crashed on Sunday at Miami International Airport, exiting the runway while landing, a tragic accident that resulted in five fatalities, all of Cuban nationality.
The preliminary investigation reveals that the aircraft landed at a high speed: 158 knots, approximately 182 miles per hour. It was also confirmed that one of the pilots warned about the situation and that the crew attempted to abort the landing seconds before the accident.
"The plane was approaching at a high speed, and the pilots were having trouble controlling it," stated Telemundo 51 expert aviation lawyer Pablo Rojas.
When the plane was approaching the runway, one of the pilots repeatedly warned his colleague that they were going too fast, and at the last moment, he requested to abort the maneuver. According to the NTSB, the cockpit voice recorders contained more than two hours of good quality audio and did not capture the other pilot giving "a coherent verbal response" to those warnings.
As they descended, several automatic alerts about speed and low altitude were heard in the cabin.
The recorder also recorded that when the aircraft began to brake, the brakes were released and the engine power increased. Shortly thereafter, one of the pilots requested to perform the maneuver to return to the air. A few seconds later, the engines reduced power and the brakes were activated again.
A finding that has captured the attention of experts is that there is no evidence that the crew deployed the air brakes or the thrust reversers, two systems specifically designed to slow down the aircraft during landing.
"We still do not know if that was a choice made by the pilots, or if those systems were not functioning, or perhaps they were not armed for automatic deployment, which can also happen. Those are the kinds of details that we still do not know," said attorney Rojas.
"It is unclear whether there was any mechanical failure, for instance, of the aircraft, and the pilots were responding to some mechanical issue, or if it was simply a pilot error. Typically, in these accidents, when we investigate them, there are several causes, not just one," he noted.
In addition to analyzing the black boxes, the investigators interviewed both crew members.
The chairwoman of the NTSB, Jennifer Homendy, explained that the agency wanted to hear the pilots' account first before releasing the full transcript of the voice recorder.
The pilot, Joseph Carroll, aged 55 with 7,145 flight hours, and the first officer Jaime Felipe Silva Molina, aged 37 with 2,655 hours, sustained minor injuries and were discharged before meeting with investigators.
The crashed plane is a Boeing 767-300, manufactured in 1994 and operated by the cargo airline 21 Air under contract for Amazon Prime Air. The flight had departed from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
After exceeding the runway by approximately 396 meters, the aircraft breached a perimeter fence and struck a van belonging to the contractor Professional Ocean Service Corporation, which was transporting seven cleaning workers.
The accident resulted in five fatalities, who were traveling in the van. They were all of Cuban origin: Rolando Alemán León (55 years old), Yoel Rodríguez Naranjo (53), Julio C. Pineda (75), Carlos Acosta Fajardo (53), and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo (47).
Parallel to the investigation, the widow of Rodríguez Naranjo, Yaraisi Santiso Morejón, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in the Miami-Dade court against Amazon Inc., Amazon Air Cargo, 21 Air LLC, and the two pilots, alleging possible crew error, inadequate training, and the use of a 32-year-old aircraft.
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