Amazon Jet Tried to Abort Landing Before Fatal Crash, NTSB Says

One of the pilots on the Amazon.com Inc. cargo plane that crashed at Miami International Airport on Sunday called for the landing to be aborted after the plane touched down with too much speed, according to audio from the flight’s final moments.

Details from the aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder, released late Wednesday by the US National Transportation Safety Board, shed some light on the sequence of events before the jet overran the runway and careered into two vehicles. All five people killed and five others injured in the crash were in those two vehicles.

Approaching the runway with clearance to land, one of the pilots “cautioned they were too fast,” the NTSB said. The plane’s computer then emitted two electronic “sink rate sink rate” alerts — a sign the aircraft was descending too rapidly — and there were also five electronic “too low terrain” audio warnings, the NTSB said.

The recorder then picked up sounds similar to a touchdown, before one of the pilots called for a go-around, the NTSB said. A go-around is a procedure to abandon a landing, regain altitude and reposition for another approach. Five seconds later, the recorder captures the noise of the plane leaving the paved runway, the NTSB said.

Prime Air Flight 7598, operated by subcontractor 21 Air LLC, overran the airport’s diagonal runway after arriving from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Boeing Co. 767 continued roughly a quarter-mile beyond the paved runway surface, striking airport navigational equipment before plowing into the two vehicles.

The jet struck a white Ford Econoline van after leaving the runway, leaving it torn apart. The van had been transporting a seven-person cleaning crew inside the airport perimeter. The aircraft then hit a small Toyota SUV traveling on a road just outside the airport fence.

Read More: Amazon Seen as Shielded from Liability for Miami Plane Crash

The fresh audio excerpts appear to back up details from the flight’s data recorder that were released earlier. Chihoon Shin, the NTSB’s investigator-in-charge of the accident, said Tuesday that the plane’s brakes were applied shortly after touchdown, before the throttles were increased “to values consistent with go-around thrust.”

The flight data showed the plane’s brakes were later reapplied and the throttles idled, though there was no indication that the aircraft’s speed brakes or thrust reversers were deployed after touchdown, the NTSB said. Those mechanisms are designed to slow planes down immediately after they land.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said Tuesday that the captain was 55 years old with 7,145 hours of flying experience, and the 37-year-old first officer had 2,655 hours, she said. It’s not clear from the audio recording details released by the NTSB what each individual said.

Amazon’s in-house cargo airline has increasingly shifted toward larger aircraft capable of handling longer flights and bulk shipments, with the 767 model involved in Sunday’s crash accounting for the largest portion of its fleet. Amazon Air also operates Airbus SE A330-300 freighters and smaller Boeing 737 aircraft for regional routes.

The incident was the second major fatal US cargo-plane accident in less than a year, following the November 2025 crash of a United Parcel Service Inc. freighter shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. That accident killed all three crew members and 11 people on the ground.

Cargo planes make up a relatively small share of commercial air traffic, though freighters are often older aircraft that previously flew in passenger service. In February 2019, a Boeing 767-300 operated by Atlas Air Inc. crashed near Houston after departing Miami, killing all three people on board.