One of the pilots of the Amazon cargo plane that careened off a Miami runway and killed five people repeatedly warned they were coming in too fast nearly two minutes ahead of time and at the last second urged them to abort the landing, according to highlights of the cockpit recording that investigators released Wednesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board released some details from the recording after investigators interviewed both pilots, but the full transcript won’t be made public until later. The agency said the other pilot didn’t consistently respond to the speed warnings.
The Amazon plane came in fast on Sunday afternoon and then barreled roughly 1,300 feet (396 meters) past the end of the runway and smashed into a van carrying workers at a plane cleaning company before hitting a compact SUV as it slid across a public road before catching fire.
All five people who died were in the van. Five others were hurt, including two who remained in critical condition on Tuesday. The two pilots survived.
At the point when the pilot first called out the plane was speeding, former FAA official Mike O’Donnell said the crew could have done a number of things to slow it down, including extending the spoilers, cutting the throttles and lowering the landing gear. Or the pilots could have just aborted the landing at that point and circled to try again.
“You have plenty of time to slow down, plenty of time to say, let’s just do a go-around at two minutes out,” said O’Donnell, who used to oversee airport safety and crash investigations.
The 32-year-old Boeing 767 was originally built to carry passengers and flew for several airlines in foreign countries for more than two decades before being converted to a cargo plane in 2015, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
The final flight was operated by 21 Air, a cargo carrier based in North Carolina.
The jet’s ownership history, maintenance records and operations by 21 Air were expected to be reviewed by NTSB investigators.
It’s the second crash of a cargo jet in the U.S. in less than a year. A UPS plane crashed after losing its engine while accelerating down the runway at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport in October. The crash killed all three pilots and 12 people on the ground. Twenty-three more were injured.