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AMERICANALMANAC (Jack Newsome) - Amazon cargo pilot warned of excessive speed for nearly two minutes before deadly Miami runway crash Fri Sep 11 19:45:32 2026

One pilot aboard an Amazon cargo jet repeatedly warned his counterpart they were coming in too fast, for nearly two minutes, before the plane overran a Miami runway, struck a van, and killed five airport workers, newly released federal recordings reveal. The National Transportation Safety Board released a summary of cockpit voice recordings Wednesday showing […] The post Amazon cargo pilot warned of excessive speed for nearly two minutes before deadly Miami runway crash appeared first on American Almanac .

One pilot aboard an Amazon cargo jet repeatedly warned his counterpart they were coming in too fast, for nearly two minutes, before the plane overran a Miami runway, struck a van, and killed five airport workers, newly released federal recordings reveal. The National Transportation Safety Board released a summary of cockpit voice recordings Wednesday showing a stark breakdown in crew coordination aboard the Boeing 767-300 as it approached Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon. One pilot called out the excessive speed again and again during the final approach and after touchdown. The AP reported that the other pilot never gave "a consistent verbal response" to those warnings. The plane had departed from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It touched down around 2 p.m. ET on Sunday, but not before automated systems aboard the aircraft issued their own alerts, a "too low terrain" electronic callout sounded four times, the New York Post reported , and the autopilot disconnected shortly after the speed warnings began. Between the human warnings and the machine warnings, the crew had roughly 100 seconds of notice that the approach was going wrong. Neither warning was enough. The jet first touched down nearly 5,000 feet into a 9,360-foot runway, almost halfway, leaving less than half the available pavement to stop a heavy cargo aircraft. Flight data recorder information released late Tuesday showed the plane was unsteady on approach amid strong winds. After an awkward touchdown, the pilots briefly shoved the throttles forward and disengaged the brakes as if attempting a go-around, then abandoned that effort four seconds later. Brakes, thrust reversers, and speed brakes all failed to deploy The mechanical picture is as troubling as the human one. Fox News reported that thrust reversers and speed brakes did not deploy after touchdown, two critical systems designed to slow a jet on rollout. Without them, and with barely half a runway remaining, the 767 had almost no chance of stopping before the pavement ended. The plane barreled roughly 1,300 feet past the end of the runway. It struck a van carrying five workers employed by an airport plane cleaning company, killing everyone inside. It then hit a compact SUV, slid across a public road, and caught fire. Five people died. Five others were injured, and as of Tuesday, two of the injured remained in critical condition. Victims were transported to Jackson South and Jackson Memorial Hospital, Breitbart reported . Miami Fire Rescue Chief Raied Jadallah described a "very complex situation," noting that the plane had "swiped several vehicles and trapped people inside who had to be extricated." The two pilots, identified as Felipe Silva Molina, 37, and Joseph Carroll, 55, both survived and were interviewed by NTSB investigators on Wednesday. Safety experts say the crew had time to abort, and didn't Former FAA official Mike O'Donnell, who previously oversaw airport safety and crash investigations, said the crew had ample opportunity to break off the approach well before anything went wrong on the ground. "You have plenty of time to slow down, plenty of time to say, let's just do a go-around at two minutes out." Steve Arroyo, a former airline pilot and safety expert, was blunter about what the recordings suggest. He said the details released Wednesday point to a fundamental failure of teamwork in the cockpit, and raised questions about whether the pilot at the controls was too fixated on completing the landing to acknowledge the speed warnings. "Where's the coordination? Where's the leadership here in terms of managing the flight deck? And following the trained guidelines set forth in the company's flight manual?" Mary Schiavo, former Inspector General of the Transportation Department, raised a related concern. She said she wonders whether the pilot at the controls was the more senior captain while the less experienced first officer was the one calling out the warnings, and whether "the junior pilot was not aggressive in challenging" the captain's decisions. If so, it would fit a well-documented pattern in aviation safety known as authority gradient, where a junior crew member hesitates to override a senior one even in an emergency. Federal investigators are now expected to review the jet's ownership history, weather conditions at the airport, maintenance records, and operations by 21 Air, the North Carolina-based cargo carrier that operated the flight . 21 Air has been flying packages for Amazon since 2024. A 32-year-old jet converted from passenger service a decade ago The aircraft itself carries a long history. The Boeing 767 was 32 years old at the time of the crash. It flew for several airlines in foreign countries for more than two decades before being converted to a cargo plane in 2015. The NTSB has not said whether the aircraft's age or conversion history played any role in the crash, but investigators have flagged the ownership history as an area of review. The Washington Examiner reported that the NTSB scheduled a press conference for 4 p.m. Monday in Miami to address the crash. A full transcript of the cockpit conversation will not be released until later in the investigation. The Miami crash is the second deadly cargo jet accident in recent months. In November, a UPS cargo plane crashed at Louisville's Muhammad Ali International Airport, killing three pilots and 12 people on the ground and injuring 23 more. That disaster raised its own questions about cargo aviation safety, questions that remain largely unanswered. Unanswered questions keep piling up Significant gaps remain. Investigators have not disclosed which pilot was at the controls and which was issuing the warnings. They have not said what specific actions, if any, the non-responsive pilot took beyond failing to answer verbally. The exact wind speed and direction at the time of landing have not been released. And it remains unclear whether occupants of the compact SUV that was also struck suffered injuries or fatalities. The cleaning company whose workers were killed has not been publicly named. The broader question of aviation safety oversight , whether federal regulators are keeping pace with the rapid growth of cargo operations, looms over the investigation. Five workers drove onto an airport service road on a Sunday afternoon and never came home. A cockpit recorder captured nearly two minutes of warnings that went unanswered. When the facts speak that clearly, the investigation had better listen. The post Amazon cargo pilot warned of excessive speed for nearly two minutes before deadly Miami runway crash appeared first on American Almanac .