Amazon 767 landing WAY too fast and late at MIA right before it overran the runway
by
u/AreYouCereal32 in
aviation

Before Air 21 Flight 7598 even touched down on the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, there had been repeated warnings that the airplane was not stabilized. In a summary of the cockpit voice recorder released by the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday, the pilot not flying cautioned that the plane was flying too fast. The pilot flying “made additional comments regarding the aircraft’s excessive speed throughout the remainder of the recording,” according to the NTSB’s recap.

The pilot monitoring did not make “a consistent verbal response to the comments about speed,” the report continues.

That pilot of the Air 21 flight being operated for Amazon, was not the only note of caution sounding in the cockpit during the last minute the plane was airborne. As it passed through one-thousand feet and again at 500 feet, the automated warning, “sink rate, sink rate” was heard, as the ground proximity warning system detected the Boeing 767 cargo plane was descending so quickly it was at risk of slamming into the ground.

Eighteen seconds before touchdown and then again at 9 seconds, “too low terrain” again alerted the pilots that the landing was unstable and at risk.

But it wasn’t until the plane had careened down the runway for 15 seconds, that one of the pilots called for a go-around. (Again, the CVR summary does not identify or even what seat that comment came from.) By that time, though, the plane was seconds away from running out of tarmac. When it did, it plowed into an airport van carrying airplane cleaning staff, some airport navigational aids, a perimeter fence and another vehicle on the road outside the airport property. Five people were killed, at least three others seriously injured.

A few things I want to note.

Which of the two pilots were flying this leg from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami has not been released by the NTSB. The pilots have been identified as Captain Joseph Carroll, aged 55, and first officer Jaime Filipe Silva Molina, 37. But it was Molina who had more experience flying the 767, having been qualified in April of 2025.  Carroll qualified in May of this year. For their ages, neither could be considered high time pilots. Carrol has a total of 7145 hours and Molina, 2566.

But the given that the investigators are describing a cockpit filled with a cacophony of concern, both human and technological, it is difficult to imagine how these pilots failed to recognize the need to abandon the landing, do a go around and try once again to conduct it within the many limits required to assure safety for everyone involved.

As I pointed out in my previous post, nearly 3 out of every 100 landings are made outside of the stabilized approach parameters. That means that 3,000 flights a day are at risk of their own version of the Air 21 disaster.

No doubt the safety board will find other areas to examine, including cockpit communication and crew resource management. Whatever the pilot flying did or didn’t do, the CVR makes it clear there was little to no contribution from the pilot monitoring beyond noting that the plane was traveling too fast. Looking at all the contributors, not just the obvious and early-detected ones is what air accident investigators do.

As for the world’s pilots drawn to their TV sets or YouTube channels over the past few days to watch this flagrant display of a landing gone wrong, perhaps a few will take make a renewed commitment to be sure every approach to landing they’re responsible for is a stable one. From now on.