A summary of cockpit voice recordings compiled by the National Transportation Safety Board said the fellow pilot never gave “a consistent verbal response” to the warnings. The plane touched down awkwardly, briefly attempted to take off and then smashed into a van carrying the five victims.
The Amazon Boeing 767 came in fast on Sunday afternoon and then barreled roughly 1,300 feet past the end of the runway and smashed into a van carrying workers at a plane cleaning company before hitting 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 hurt, including two who remained in critical condition on Tuesday. The two pilots survived and were interviewed Wednesday by investigators.
The pilots had time to correct or abandon their landing
At the point when the pilot first called out the plane was speeding, former FAA official Mike O’Donnell said the crew could have done a number of things to slow it down, including extending the spoilers, cutting the throttles and lowering the landing gear. Or the pilots could have just aborted the landing at that point and circled to try again.
“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 used to oversee airport safety and crash investigations.
