MIAMI (AP) — Flight data suggest an Amazon cargo plane tried to abort an unsteady landing at Miami International Airport before smashing into a van and killing five people inside, according to information investigators released Tuesday.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators will interview the pilot, co-pilot and crew members on Wednesday as they try to determine why the jet overran the runway while landing Sunday.
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer
Homendy said at an evening news conference that they are reviewing flight data and cockpit recordings to figure out what happened in the seconds before the aircraft slammed into the van on airport property, careened through a fence and then smashed an SUV on a city street.
The five people killed were all inside a van used to shuttle crews that clean planes, authorities said.
Five other people were injured. The pilot and co-pilot have been released from the hospital, Miami-Dade County Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz said Tuesday. Two people remain in critical condition, while a third is in stable condition, she said.
Both the mangled white van, its entire front end crushed, and the SUV — so badly damaged it was nearly unrecognizable — remained at the crash site Tuesday, along with the jet, which sat nose-down with a large soot mark near the P in “Prime Air.”
The NTSB is investigating the crash. One focus will be on the lack of a system to slow and stop speeding jets at the end of runways.
Miami is not one of the 120 airports in the U.S. with lightweight, crushable material that the Federal Aviation Administration says has saved around 500 lives.
Even without a runway excursion system, Miami’s airport appears to be compliant with federal rules because it has a 1,000-foot (305-meter) safety buffer at the end of its runways, experts said.
Homendy said her agency’s goal is to prevent tragedies, but runway excursions continue to happen even after the board has suggested installing the systems in the past.
“Our recommendations must be implemented or we’re going to be here again,” she said at a Monday news conference.
The Amazon jet was landing after a two-hour flight from Puerto Rico as storms brewed around the Miami airport. The NTSB said the plane barreled roughly 1,300 feet (396 meters) past the end of the runway.
Former FAA official Mike O’Donnell said Tuesday that the fact that the plane landed on its nose and right landing gear first demonstrates this was an unstable landing. He said the pilot might have been attempting a “go-around” to retry the landing approach.
“A go-around probably should have been executed sooner than that. And it seems like they hesitated," O'Donnell said.
O’Donnell said that by the the time the crew tried to abort the landing, it may have been too late if there wasn’t enough runway left. But the interviews investigators scheduled with the pilots for Wednesday will reveal more about what they were thinking at that moment.
Aviation attorney Mary Schiavo, who once was the Transportation Department’s Inspector General, said “it almost seems like there was a disagreement between the pilots on what to do.”
Video of the landing showed the plane hovering above the runway for a long time without flaring the nose to force the wheels onto the ground. Experts said it appeared a strong tail wind propelled the plane far past the point where it was supposed to land. Air traffic controllers also had not changed the approach to the runway to allow the plane to land into a headwind.
Amazon said in a statement that it is cooperating with the investigation and the company’s deepest sympathies go to the victims and their families.
The five people killed were all in a van owned by Professional Ocean Service Corp., a company that cleans planes. The company said it wouldn’t comment on the crash out of respect for the families who lost loved ones.
“Our 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,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.
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.
Homendy said the crash raises safety concerns for workers at airports. “This is certainly very tragic. You would not think riding in a van to clean an airplane, that this would happen,” she said.
The flight had been operated by 21 Air, a cargo carrier based in North Carolina. 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.
Two of the four runways at the Miami airport remained closed Tuesday, and Homendy said they will not be reopened until NTSB investigators gather all the information they need from the crash scene.
More than 225 flights were canceled Sunday and Monday, and hundreds more were delayed, officials said.
Homendy said the NTSB will try to release the runway back to the airport as quickly as possible after investigators document the scene.
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Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska, and Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Christopher Weber and David Fischer contributed to this report.
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Due to an error in a news release from the Miami-Dade County Sheriff's Office, an earlier version of this story misspelled the last name of victim Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo.
