NTSB Recovers Black Boxes from Amazon Prime Air Cargo Plane Crash in Miami

Investigators with the US National Transportation Safety Board said on Monday they had recovered the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from an Amazon Prime Air cargo plane that overran the runway and crashed while landing in Miami on Sunday, killing five people on the ground.

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said the two devices, commonly referred to as the black boxes, were being returned to the agency’s headquarters in Washington on Monday night for evaluation.

The 32-year-old Boeing 767-33A, operated by Miami-based 21 Air LLC, overran the runway by some 396 metres (1,300ft) and crashed into two vehicles on the ground: an Econoline van on the airport grounds carrying seven people from an airline cleaning crew and a Toyota SUV that was driving on a road beyond the perimeter fence.

The two people aboard the plane, the pilot and co-pilot, survived and had yet to be interviewed, Homendy said in a press conference.

Five people were injured, three of them critically, officials said on Sunday.

Homendy, leading a team of 32 investigators at Miami International Airport, briefed reporters on the early stages of the investigation but said a probable cause of the accident would not be determined until the end of the investigation.

The NTSB was still recovering and recording evidence, and crews were still removing jet fuel from the scene and aircraft, keeping two of the airport’s four runways closed. Although the airport halted all flights immediately after the crash, flights had resumed by Sunday evening.