Pilot warned Amazon cargo plane was too fast before crash

One pilot aboard an Amazon cargo plane repeatedly warned that the aircraft was coming in too fast before it overshot a Miami runway, struck vehicles and burst into flames, killing five people, federal investigators said in a new update.

The National Transportation Safety Board said a cockpit voice recording summary showed one pilot cautioned the other multiple times about “the aircraft’s excessive speed” during the approach and after touchdown Sunday afternoon. The summary said there was “not a consistent verbal response” to the warnings, which continued for nearly two minutes, NPR reported.

The Boeing 767-300, operating as Amazon Prime Air Flight 7598, landed at 158 knots, or about 292 km/h, according to the NTSB data. Experts cited by the BBC said that speed was on the high end. The full transcript of the cockpit conversation will not be released until later in the investigation.

The NTSB said the cockpit recording also captured automated warnings in the final minutes, including “sink rate sink rate,” a warning about descent speed, and “too low terrain,” an alert that the plane was close to the ground without being properly configured for landing.

Flight recorder information released by investigators showed the plane was unstable as it approached amid strong winds, NPR reported. After touching down, the pilots briefly disengaged the brakes and advanced the throttles as if attempting to take off again and retry the landing, but abandoned that effort after four seconds.

The plane was well down the runway when its right and nose landing gear first touched down, reducing the distance available to stop. NPR reported that Flightradar24, using NTSB data, estimated the aircraft was nearly halfway down the 9,360-foot runway when it touched down. Strong winds as storms moved into the airport may have created a tail wind that pushed the plane forward, NPR reported.

After leaving the runway, the aircraft struck ground equipment and hit a white Ford van carrying a plane-cleaning crew. It continued through a perimeter fence, collided with a Toyota Corolla and came to rest about 1,300 feet beyond the runway before catching fire.

All five people killed were in the van. Miami authorities identified them as Rolando Aleman Leon, 55; Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53; Julio C. Pineda, 75; Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53; and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47. Five other people were injured, including two who remained in critical condition Tuesday. The two pilots survived and were interviewed Wednesday by investigators.

Former FAA official Mike O’Donnell said the crew still had options when the first speed warning was called out, including extending spoilers, cutting throttles, lowering landing gear or aborting the landing. “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 formerly oversaw airport safety and crash investigations.

Aviation attorney Pablo Rojas told CBS News, the BBC’s U.S. partner, that without the actual recording it was difficult to know precisely what investigators meant by the inconsistent verbal response. “But, it really confirms that this was, in a way, a doomed approach,” he said.

Rojas also pointed to flap deployment as a possible area of concern. Flaps help an aircraft slow and approach landing, he said, but in this case “happened much later in the accident sequence.” He added: “That’s maybe because the pilots were responding to the fact that they were going too fast.”

Former airline pilot and safety expert Steve Arroyo said the new details raised questions about cockpit coordination. “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?” he said.

The 32-year-old Boeing 767 was originally built as a passenger aircraft and was converted to cargo use in 2015, according to Flightradar24. NPR reported the flight was operated by 21 Air, a North Carolina-based cargo carrier that has flown packages for Amazon since 2024. Investigators are expected to review the aircraft’s ownership history, weather, maintenance records and 21 Air’s operations.