Pilot’s speed warning preceded crash of Amazon cargo plane in Miami
Developing story first seen 2 hours ago
The National Transportation Safety Board has confirmed the identities of the two pilots involved in Sunday's fatal Amazon Air cargo plane crash in Miami, named as Jaime Felipe Silva Molina and Joseph Carroll, both of whom survived with minor injuries and have since been interviewed following their release from hospital. The NTSB also disclosed that the warning pilot made repeated comments about the aircraft's "excessive speed" throughout the remainder of the cockpit recording, not just in the final moments before impact, though the full audio has not yet been made public. The five people killed when the plane ploughed through a fence into a cleaning company's van have been named as Rolando Aleman, 55, Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53, Julio C. Pineda, 75, Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53, and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47.
Flight data released by investigators showed the aircraft's nose landing gear touched down first at 182mph, an unstable configuration one former FAA investigator called "really bad," with brakes not applied for a further seven seconds. Fifteen seconds before the crash, and with the plane still travelling at 138mph, the brakes were released and throttles increased in an apparent last-second attempt to abort the landing and go around, but the manoeuvre came too late and the aircraft crashed five seconds later. The investigation into the disaster remains ongoing.
- NTSB names pilots Jaime Felipe Silva Molina and Joseph Carroll; both survived, interviewed
- Five crash victims named; pilot repeatedly warned of "excessive speed" during landing
- Plane hit 182mph nose-first before botched go-around attempt failed, killing five
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Sunday's crash saw an Amazon Air cargo plane come down in Miami after ploughing through a fence and hitting a cleaning company's van, killing five people on the ground. The two pilots on board survived with minor injuries. The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the body responsible for investigating civil aviation accidents in America, is leading the inquiry into what went wrong.
Central to the investigation is the cockpit voice recording, in which one of the two pilots can reportedly be heard repeatedly raising concerns about the aircraft travelling too fast. Investigators have also released technical flight data showing how the plane touched down and behaved in the seconds before impact, information used to reconstruct exactly what happened during the landing.
The case matters because it centres on a basic question in aviation safety: whether a preventable mistake or mechanical issue caused a landing to go badly wrong, and whether warning signs were acted on in time. The NTSB's findings, once complete, could affect how cargo airlines and their crews handle similar situations in future.
Full account
A cockpit voice recording released by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Wednesday has shown that one of the two pilots flying an Amazon-branded cargo jet that crashed in Miami repeatedly warned the aircraft was travelling "too fast" as it came in to land and after it touched down. The Boeing 767, operated by cargo carrier 21 Air, overran the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday, ploughed through a perimeter fence and struck a van carrying aircraft-cleaning staff, killing all five people inside. The two pilots on board, named as Captain Joseph Carroll, 55, and First Officer Jaime Felipe Silva Molina, 37, survived with relatively minor injuries.
According to the NTSB's summary of the cockpit voice recorder, the speed warnings were repeated over a period of close to two minutes as the aircraft made what flight data indicate was an unstable approach in strong winds, but the pilot receiving them never gave a clear or consistent verbal reply. Automated cockpit alerts, including repeated "sink rate" and "too low terrain" warnings, also sounded as the jet descended. Investigators said the aircraft's nose landing gear first touched the runway at around 182mph, touching down roughly 5,000 feet into a runway measuring just over 9,300 feet — leaving less than half the tarmac available to stop. The main landing gear did not fully settle for several more seconds, and the brakes were not applied until roughly seven seconds after the nose gear made contact.
Data from the flight recorders shows the crew briefly tried to abort the landing, advancing the throttles and releasing the brakes in what investigators described as an attempted go-around, before abandoning that manoeuvre only a few seconds later and resuming braking. By this point the jet was left with too little runway to stop safely; it ran roughly 1,300 feet past the end of the strip before crashing through the boundary fence and into the van. The NTSB has not yet released the full cockpit transcript or explained precisely why the attempted go-around was called so late, and the investigation into the cause of the accident continues.
The five people killed in the van, all members of a crew that cleaned aircraft at the airport, were named as Rolando Aleman, 55, Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53, Julio C. Pineda, 75, Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53, and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47. A further five people were injured, two of them critically. Both pilots were treated in hospital for minor injuries, discharged, and subsequently interviewed by NTSB investigators on Wednesday. NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy has confirmed the broad sequence of events but the agency has given no indication yet of what caused the crew to misjudge their speed and approach so severely.
Where outlets differ
Only the Daily Mail-style report names the five victims killed in the van; the Fox News report withholds their identities but gives a fuller account of the injured, noting five hurt and two in critical condition.
The Fox News report gives fuller identification of the pilots, including their ages and their employer, cargo airline 21 Air, and attributes the strong-wind, unstable-approach detail to the flight data recorder; the other report focuses more on the cockpit audio and quotes the lead investigator, Chihoon Shin, and aviation commentary from a former FAA official.
The two accounts describe the aborted go-around with slightly different timing details — one citing brakes released/throttles engaged roughly 15 seconds before the crash with impact five seconds after the speed warning, the other describing the go-around attempt as lasting about four seconds before it was abandoned and braking resumed — reflecting different emphases in reporting the same NTSB data rather than a factual contradiction.
Fox News attributes the pilots being interviewed after hospital release to Associated Press reporting, while the other source attributes this timeline directly to NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy.
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Originally published by Daily Mail as “Pilot warned that Amazon plane was going TOO FAST before it overran Miami runway and killed 5, new cockpit audio reveals”.