A pilot on Amazon Prime Air Flight 7598 warned repeatedly that the Boeing 767-300 was going too fast before it overshot a runway in Miami on Sunday, and the NTSB says the cockpit did not answer back in a steady way even as alarms kept sounding.
That update matters now because it gives the clearest picture yet of the final approach that ended with five deaths and five injuries. Miami authorities identified the dead on Tuesday as Rolando Aleman Leon, Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, Julio C Pineda, Carlos Acosta Fajardo and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, all of them part of a plane-cleaning crew riding in a van when the cargo jet came through the runway area.
The flight data shows why investigators are focusing on speed. The Boeing's landing speed was 158 knots, or about 292km/h, and the NTSB said the record included speed, altitude and flap deployment as the aircraft closed in on the runway. An electronic sink rate callout and an electronic too low terrain callout also came during the final minutes, adding to the picture of a jet that was still pressing toward the runway while warning systems were speaking up.
The friction point is what the cockpit was doing with those warnings. The NTSB said one pilot's cautions about speed continued throughout the rest of the recording, but it also said there was not a consistent verbal response. Aviation attorney Pablo Rojas said it was hard to know without the actual recording what investigators meant by that, but he added that it “really confirms that this was, in a way, a doomed approach,” and said the flap deployment came much later in the accident sequence, possibly because the pilots were trying to correct for the speed.
After overshooting the runway, the plane struck equipment on the ground, hit a white Ford van, continued through a perimeter fence, collided with a Toyota Corolla and came to rest about 1,300ft, or 394m, beyond the runway. The NTSB is still leading the investigation, but the update already points to the same core question investigators now have to answer: why the aircraft stayed on the approach after repeated speed warnings instead of breaking off sooner.
