Amazon Cargo Plane Crash: Pilot Warned of Excessive Speed Before Fatal Miami Landing

Newly released cockpit recordings from the Amazon cargo plane that crashed in Miami reveal that one of the pilots repeatedly warned the aircraft was descending too fast, nearly two minutes before the fatal landing attempt. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released these details on Wednesday after interviewing both pilots, though the full transcript will be made public at a later date.

The plane, which was arriving on Sunday afternoon, came in at an excessive speed and overshot the runway by roughly 1,300 feet (396 meters). It then struck a van carrying workers from a plane cleaning company, and subsequently hit a compact SUV as it slid across a public road before catching fire.

All five people who died were in the van. Five others were injured, with two remaining in critical condition as of Tuesday. The two pilots survived the crash.

According to the NTSB, the other pilot did not consistently respond to the speed warnings. At the moment the first pilot called out the excessive speed, former Federal Aviation Administration official Mike O'Donnell noted that the crew had several options to slow the aircraft, such as extending spoilers, reducing throttle, or lowering landing gear. Alternatively, they could have aborted the landing and circled for another attempt.

"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 previously oversaw airport safety and crash investigations.