Florida officials said preliminary evidence collected from the site of a deadly Amazon cargo plane crash at Miami International Airport suggested the pilots considered aborting the landing moments before the aircraft careened off the tarmac.
At a press conference Tuesday evening, Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), shared information from the aircraft’s flight data recorder, recovered from the wreckage on Monday, suggesting the plane’s two pilots appeared to attempt a go-around to retry the landing before aborting the procedure.
A go-around is a routine maneuver in which the pilot stops a landing attempt by powering up the engines and climbing back into the sky.
The cockpit voice recorder was also recovered and has been transported to a lab in Washington, D.C., for analysis.
NTSB investigators plan to interview the pilot and co-pilot on Wednesday as they try to determine what caused the fatal collision.
Homendy said officials want to speak with the pilots before releasing additional data from the cockpit voice recorder about why they appeared to briefly retry the landing approach before abandoning it.
She said the data showed the thrust reversers were never used to help stop the plane. Thrust reversers are a mechanical system that redirects air to help slow the plane.
Strong tailwinds may also have contributed to the plane overshooting the runway, experts told the AP.
The five people killed in the crash, who were identified on Tuesday, were inside a Ford van used to transport aircraft cleaning crews. All of them were employees of Ocean Service Corp., a airline cleaning contractor.
After slamming into the vehicle, the plane hit a Toyota Corolla Cross LE before continuing into a grassy field and running into another fence that closed off an area where Tesla robotaxis were stationed.
Five other people were injured. The pilot and co-pilot were taken to a nearby hospital and have been released, Miami-Dade County Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz said Tuesday.
Two people remain in critical condition, while a third is in stable condition, she added.
Both the mangled van and the SUV remained at the crash site Tuesday, along with the jet, which came to a halt nose-down in a patch of grass. The NTSB said the plane travelled roughly 1,300 feet past the end of the runway.
Former FAA official Mike O’Donnell told the Associated Press Tuesday that the manner in which the plane hit the runway suggests pilots may have hesitated before initiating a go-around, meaning that by the time they attempted to abort it, there may not have been enough runway left to land the plane.
The captain is 55 and has 7,145 hours of flight time. The first officer is 37 and has 2,655 hours, the NTSB said.
Professional Ocean Service Corporation said in a statement that its employees “are far more than the people who work beside us each day; they are family, and they are deeply loved.”
“Our hearts and prayers are with every employee and every family whose lives have been forever changed. We grieve with those who lost a loved one and pray for the healing and recovery of those who were injured,” it concluded.
The Miami homicide bureau is investigating the deaths resulting from the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is leading the investigation into the aircraft and wreckage. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has launched a full investigation into the cause of the overshoot.
The Miami-Dade sheriff identified the deceased as Rolando Aleman Leon, 55; Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53; Julio C. Pineda, 75; Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53; and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47.
— with files from the Associated Press