26 ms·

NTSB issues investigative update on B-767 runway excursion accident in Miami

150 points by mckn1ght 6d ago

imglorp 6d ago
tldw, per Blancolirio: unstable approach, crew should have done a go around at 1000 agl but did not attempt one until it was too late, then aborted the go around.
- bdamm 6d ago
  The "hazardous attitudes" study in this report will be gold.
  - cyanydeez 6d ago
    "Capitalism caused this crash"
    - loeg 6d ago
      Ah, yes, the Soviets never took risks. It couldn't be that humans are fallible.
      - cyanydeez 6d ago
        telling yourselves that it was "communism" that did this as opposed to the stark raving lunancy of the current American regime is hilarious misunderstanding of political ideals.
        loeg 5d ago
        No buddy. I'm just saying it wasn't "capitalism," which was your claim. I don't think you can pin this on Trump or his admin, either.
      - rbanffy 6d ago
        If there was pressure to arrive quickly (hence the high airspeed) or not do a go-around for whatever profit-related reasons, then I would say need to profit was involved in the decision making process that led to this. When you take resource consumption out of the equation, you are more free to make lower-risk decisions.
- deleted 6d ago
  [deleted]
- wanderingmoose 6d ago
  I think the real question is why didn't the pilots do a go around. I bet there are underlying pressures from the airlines and/or amazon to not do a go around to avoid schedule delays or fuel costs.
  - cadre_78 6d ago
    Bingo.
  - deleted 6d ago
    [deleted]
  - pseudosavant 6d ago
    Could a company that won't let delivery drivers stop to pee possibly be pushing their pilots that hard? Yes. Yes, they could.
  - randerson 6d ago
    In one of the videos you can see dark clouds behind the plane. I suspect the pilots knew they'd have to divert to a different airport if they couldn't land and put pressure on themselves to not have to do that.
    - loeg 6d ago
      You can go around and try again at the same airport long before you have to divert.
  - dghlsakjg 6d ago
    I've never heard of anything even close to this. Airlines in the US do not pressure pilots to avoid go arounds. Pilots in the US do not delegate life or death decisions to ops, especially since the FAA legally holds them accountable for that. All pilots are aware that they are responsible for the decision to go around or not. Any airline found to be pressuring pilots to avoid go arounds would be in a world of pain with the FAA. On cargo flights in particular timing and fuel usage are less critical than passenger flights, and a go around doesn't affect either much. Pressure to avoid go arounds would also be incredibly counter productive since go arounds exist to preserve life and property. Pilots do go arounds to avoid costly incidents. You are correct that the question is why they didn't do a go around, but I would bet a large sum of money that airline pressure to avoid go arounds was not a factor.
- sscaryterry 6d ago
  Yep, its also the most intuitive way to reason about it when you look at the data. Unfortunately, a bad call. I'm sure many of us would have made the same mistake.
  - lisper 6d ago
    Private pilot here. No, I'm quite sure very few of you here would have made the same mistake as evidenced by the fact that literally hundreds of thousands of aircraft land successfully every day, many of them under much more adverse conditions. This is not a oh-it-could-have-happened-to-anyone kind of screwup, this is a did-this-guy-really-go-through-basic-pilot-training kind of screwup.
    - sscaryterry 6d ago
      [flagged]
      - cjbprime 6d ago
        They made a series of at least ten (and that's kind of charitable) this-must-never-happen mistakes that likely rise to the level of extraordinary criminal negligence, including ignoring checklists, alarms, configuring the plane for landing in general, and basically everything related to safety. You don't have to extend sympathy, just as you don't have to extend sympathy to drunk drivers who kill people.
        collabs 6d ago
        I am not a pilot and I don't know anything about flying. I can go along with the idea that the pilot / crew made mistakes. So the next obvious question is how do we make sure this does not happen again? Is there anything that can be done at all here?
        cjbprime 6d ago
        Maybe ATC could be expected to revoke landing clearance on extremely obviously unstable approaches? I wonder why that didn't happen.
- baggy_trough 6d ago
  Obligatory Blancolirio link: https://youtu.be/dcf7n0T3D9c https://youtu.be/dcf7n0T3D9c
- stevenwoo 6d ago
  Pilot B kept warning pilot A(who was at the controls) that the airspeed was too high and no adjustments were made https://www.npr.org/2026/09/10/g-s1-142664/cargo-plane-miami-crash https://www.npr.org/2026/09/10/g-s1-142664/cargo-plane-miami...
  - loeg 6d ago
    Yeah, but it's also Pilot B's job to take over if Pilot A isn't flying safely. He didn't.
bradly 6d ago
> There was no indication in the recorded data that speed brakes or thrust reversers were deployed. I don't know anything about flying. Is this normal? Doesn't sound like it, but I don't know why the pilots would not have used these things that sound useful.
- Onavo 6d ago
  Depending on the plane they need the wheels to have sufficient weight on them first. Also strangely the flaps 30 and flaps 40 call outs do not match.
  - buildsjets 6d ago
    The Boeing 767 does not have a Flaps 40 setting. The "Forty" callout was an automated annunciation of the radar-altimeter measured altitude above the runway.
- ofcrpls 6d ago
  The lack of contact of the left wheels on the ground, which the Weight of Wheel sensor deployment depends on, as in both wheels being grounded, which the auto-speed brakes/thrust reversers depend on, worsened the whole situation as the crew seems to be unaware why they weren't losing speed after they'd 'landed'. Every single thing they could do wrong at, they did.
  - bronson 6d ago
    After applying the brakes for 8 seconds, they then went to full throttle to try get back in the air for four more seconds. That's bonkers.
  - Polizeiposaune 6d ago
    > Every single thing they could do wrong at, they did. There are just too many ways to screw up for that ever to be the case. For instance, they could also have been lined up to land on something other than the runway they were cleared to land on -- see Air Canada Flight 759, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759, which came within 14 feet of colliding with an aircraft on the taxiway they mistook for the runway..
toomuchtodo 6d ago
Related: Prime Air crash: 10+ mandatory go-around triggers were ignored [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49650689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49650689 - September 2026 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm6G7EOP5Qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm6G7EOP5Qc
Neywiny 6d ago
I've been watching the Flying for Money videos on this. He has interesting insight. It's a bit disappointing he just threw the data into an LLM for processing since it doesn't seem that hard to process, but otherwise he's been pretty good at bringing up likely possibilities based on Occam's razor. Mostly around negligence and most recently about junior vs senior pilot shyness vs ego. What I don't understand from his analysis though was early on he said the tail wind increased a minute before landing which is too quick to have communicated. If that's true, we need to get better about this. A minute to send a message is ages. It should be automatic between the airport and the aircraft.
teravor 6d ago
apparently they weren't even properly configured until almost touching down.
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cameldrv 6d ago
They made a whole song about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccq30minme8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccq30minme8
waterTanuki 6d ago
> [01:42] A pilot called for ﬂaps to be set to 20 degrees, and the other pilot cautioned they were too fast. The other pilot made additional comments regarding the aircraft’s excessive speed throughout the remainder of the recording. There was not a consistent verbal response to the comments about speed The interaction here is eerily similar to the pilot interactions preceding the 1997 Korean Air Flight 801 (B747) disaster in Guam [1]. It's not clear based on the NTSB update if the Captain was ignoring the First Officer or the other way around. [1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801_-_Aircraft_Accident_Report_(NTSB)/Cockpit_Voice_Recorder_Transcript https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801_-_Aircr...
YPPH 6d ago
This has all the hallmarks of a "gethomeitis" disaster, where the urge to push on overrides better judgment about going around and doing things properly.
- saimiam 6d ago
  A bad driver never misses an exit.
eh_why_not 6d ago
So many mistakes. A notable part is this: >> CVR: 00:15 A pilot called for a go-around. >> FDR: 00:15 Brakes were released at a groundspeed of 120 knots and throttles were increased to a value consistent with go-around thrust. >> FDR: 00:11 The throttles were reduced to idle power and the brakes were re-applied. The groundspeed was 117 knots. The throttles remained at idle, and brakes remained applied until the end of the recording. So they decided to go-around (i.e. do not land and climb immediately, going full thrust), then 4 seconds later changed their mind and went back to power idle and brakes (unclear how speed didn't increase). While they were still late in calling a go-around (they should have done it before being anywhere close to touching down due to their unstable approach), guessing those 4 seconds contributed to the disaster by a lot.
- JumpCrisscross 6d ago
  > While they were still late in calling a go-around (they should have done it before being anywhere close to touching down due to their unstable approach) Barring a massive tailwind, they had enough groundspeed to go around at touchdown (158 kts). I think we'll find throttling to G-A and then aborting the G-A caused the crash. If they'd committed to landing they at least wouldn't have overshot with that much energy. If they'd decided to G-A even at 00:15, they may have been well within margin to take back off.
  - loeg 6d ago
    They didn't have much runway left at 00:15 and were far slower than 158 at that point. They came in far too fast, descending too rapidly; first touch was >50% down the runway, and they didn't get the left gear down, so the spoilers and brakes didn't apply until even later. Should have had a better approach; should have gone around before they even touched the ground; conditional on the bad approach and first touch, they should have gone around after the initial touch 50% down the runway. But they made the wrong choices at all of those points.
    - labcomputer 6d ago
      Yea, they couldn’t get the left gear down because they they had enough airspeed to execute a go-around! Literally 5 consecutive minutes of making 100s of wrong decisions snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. According to news reports, a magistrate judge at OSHA has been sandbagging an investigation into retaliatory firings by this airline (of pilots who reported unsafe practices with maintenance, CRM, training, scheduling, everything). I wonder if the NTSB will include that judge in the investigation. It seems like he or she has a lot to answer for. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/miami-plane-crash-21-air-safety-record/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/miami-plane-crash-21-air-safety...
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mandeepj 6d ago
The NTSB confirmed that while the pilot applied the physical wheel brakes, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) showed zero evidence that the speed brakes/spoilers ever extended. They also overshot the runway; I think those were the key mistakes that caused the accident. https://www.wisn.com/article/amazon-cargo-plane-black-box-miami/73653931 https://www.wisn.com/article/amazon-cargo-plane-black-box-mi...
- xenadu02 6d ago
  No, the left main was not on the ground after touchdown for some time. The aircraft will not auto-deploy the spoilers nor autobrake until it senses weight on weels. It also locks out the thrust reversers. All for obvious reasons. The left wing was lifting because they came in way too fast. 30-40 knots above final approach speed. That's why they landed so flat - if they had assumed correct flare AoA the airplane would have flown away from the runway. This is the definition of trying to "horse it onto the runway". Disclosure: Pilot on small GA aircraft but not ATP and not jet rated so YMMV. FWIW small airplanes are the same: if you're too fast they don't want to land. Bad things happen when you try to force them.
  - rogerrogerr 6d ago
    Seeing a 767 wheelbarrow down a runway is so surreal. Brings back fond memories of scaring CFIs in a 172.
  - rbanffy 6d ago
    > The aircraft will not auto-deploy the spoilers nor autobrake until it senses weight on weels. It also locks out the thrust reversers. All for obvious reasons. While I agree the obvious course of action would be a go-around, a manual override for when you know doing the stupid thing is the least unsafe thing to do would be handy.
    - mylies43 5d ago
      I disagree, the situations where you are not fully on the ground but still want those things are minimal, thats a go around need at that point. I bet it would be set off way more accidently then it ever would be on purpose. The systems are also highly redundant so its extremely unlikely they would fail and there would be a valid reason to override the computer. Plus even in this case it wouldn't have saved them, it was too fast too far, plus Im sure there would be some unpleasantness if both engines went full reverse while one landing gear was still not on the ground, thats gonna be some yaw right there :p . Its kinda like saying what if I need to override ABS?
xenadu02 6d ago
Pilot here but not ATP or Jet rated. When you try to land with too much energy the airplane refuses. When you get within a wingspan or two of the ground then ground effect starts giving you more and more lift. That plus excess speed means the airplane simply will not come down. To force it down you lower the nose but that can end up castering on the nose wheel, starting a PIO event (pilot-induced oscillation), or as in this case the left wing just refused to stop flying. The "quartering tailwind" is a red herring. The jet was well within its tailwind limits - most of the wind was crosswind at that point and the tailwind contribution wasn't anywhere near enough to explain what happened. When you get above glide slope things get worse as you now need to lose altitude but that increases your speed. Even if you get the speed under control if you come at the runway with a 1700-2500fpm descent rate inertia can slam you into the runway. They were coming in with way too much speed. They leveled off and got above glide slope because they were trying to bleed off enough speed to get within flap speed - flaps give you more drag which they desperately needed. I made the transition this year into a much higher performance airplane and even going from a Cessna 172 to an A36 TN Bonanza the difference is stark. You must be way further ahead of the airplane in the Bonanza or you will find yourself screaming into the airport at 170kts when your landing speed is more like 80kts. And discover you are above flap and gear extension speed with all power taken out - thus without a good way to slow down. Transport category jets are that times 100. You absolutely cannot get behind the aircraft. You plan your descents. You begin them much earlier. You pull power earlier. You add drag before speed runs away. Above all else when you're barreling in 40kts above landing speed you call a go-around and try it again. It is way too late to fix it. This accident started 30 minutes before they touched the tarmac. A complete failure of planning, of execution, and of ADM (to admit the problem and go-around).
- psunavy03 6d ago
  Did fly jets, although not transport-class ones. Just to hammer home that everything here is correct, and the common thread through all aircraft types is disciplined execution. You fly an approach on airspeed and/or angle of attack, and on glideslope. Period. You're either there or you're correcting to get there, and you're correcting at a point that you don't need huge oh-my-God corrections in close. If you can't do that, sucks to be you, take your waveoff like a real man or woman, and next time suck less.
cyberrock 6d ago
Looking at it from the glass-half-full perspective, I'm impressed that pilots declare go-around as often as they do. As someone who sometimes can't decide whether I should declare a production incident (even if it's not my change), I wonder if it's possible to learn that decisiveness.
- cube00 6d ago
  > can't decide whether I should declare a production incident A supportive culture encourages you to declare early at the first sign you feel something isn't right. The fact you're struggling to decide means it should be declared but you feel some negative force if ends up not as serious as you think. A supportive culture will work with you and if necessary down grade the priority if it can wait until a regular release cycle. It's the same rot that set into Telstra https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534127
- iamtedd 6d ago
  Way better to abort and try again, than commit and run the risk of something going wrong. What harm is there in doing a go around if you can? They have plenty of fuel to try multiple times, and have clearance to do so if required.
- SoftTalker 6d ago
  That's why there are standards that define when to go around. If you aren't stable, on glide slope, at proper airspeed, and the before-landing checklist complete at 1000 feet, a go-around is mandatory. There's no choice at that point (or should not be).
  - cube00 6d ago
    > That's why there are standards that define when to go around. Greg Feith covered this well on one of the Mayday episodes, he put an American Airlines' manager on the stand during the NTSB investigation. What were the company rules for pilots flying near thunderstorms? When asked the question, he basically responded that he just didn't want his pilots flying into that type of weather. Our pilots are forbidden to enter or depart a terminal area blanketed by thunderstorms. Well, that's a very subjective call for a pilot. Pilots need boundaries. You have to set limits. If there's convective activity, that is thunderstorm activity, that's within five nautical miles of the airport, there's lightning, there's wind shear... don't go there.
thenthenthen 6d ago
It was an overrun accident of an Amazon cargo plane that killed 5 people: https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/06/us/boeing-miami-plane-overruns-runway https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/06/us/boeing-miami-plane-overrun...
ljuracz 6d ago
So sad. Multiple humans may make more serious mistakes as a group than individually could. FAR/AIM is written with blood. There could be an automated safeguard to block such landing attempts - with the capability of explicit emergency override - based on the profile of the approach or even just based on the intercom.
lenerdenator 6d ago
I know that it's not a luxury that all metro areas can implement, but if you look at airports like Denver or Kansas City, there is a very, very good reason that those airports are out in the middle of nowhere. Lots of accidents happen close to the runway, either on takeoff or landing. It's better that it be in a field than a road or building filled with people.
- Peanuts99 6d ago
  Isn't this usually because people don't like big jets flying over their houses.
  - lenerdenator 6d ago
    The way this was dealt with historically, for better or for worse, was to put the cheap housing under the flight path. The proles were left to deal with the noise. The Harlem neighborhood of Kansas City North is a good example of this. It sits next to MKC and has a flophouse motel, a car repair shop, and little else. When aircraft got significantly faster, heavier, and larger with the advent of jet airliners, it became less of a noise issue and more of a safety issue. You can tell people to put up with noise, you can't tell them to put up with a huge airplane falling out of the sky onto their homes.
drillsteps5 6d ago
A few observations to add context (partially stolen from PPRuNe): - Pilot Flying (PF) was the Captain, 55 yo (presumably) more experienced pilot, who only got certified to fly that type (B767) in May - Pilot Monitoring (PM) was a 38 yo first officer, also not very experienced on B767 - PF made a number of mistakes, going too high, too fast (partially because he was descending too fast), not catching the glidescope on time - PM was concerned that the approach/descent was abnormal but kept his mouth shut as the more experienced captain was at the controls (Edit: apparently he did speak up but PF did not acknowledge) - PM lowered the flaps much later than required (PF orders flaps lowered and PM executes, but flaps can only be lowered when aircraft goes below certain speed) and the flaps were lowered all the way as the plane crossed the runway threshold, which likely caused plane to "float" and overshoot even further - Plane touched down too late, and left wheel even later, which likely precluded some braking mechanisms from activating (or the PF forgot to since was busy trying to put the thing down) - PM finally said "too fast, go around" but PF ignored him (or likely did not hear) - In these situations PM has the right (and obligation) to take over the controls and start go around by themselves, but he didn't, presumably because the Cap was driving - PF finally panicked and started the go around procedure, bit realized it was too late almost as the front wheel exited the runway, idled the engines and reapplied the brakes. So, yeah...
- jsmith45 6d ago
  This is the spitting image of old pre-CRM thinking: If I try to force the captain to go around, (or follow procedures or whatever), then i am exceeding my authority and will probably be fired. Some cultures have this sort of mentality a lot stronger than others, and it has zero place in the modern cockpit. While a captain can pull rank, they really should only ever do it with respect to the first officer if: an inexperienced first officer is trying to insist on something dangerous or forbidden by law or policy, or if the captain fully understands an FO's concerns, is fully accounting for them, and as the person ultimately responsible for safety, has determined from experience and training that the current action is safer than alternatives, and would explain but cannot explain right now for workload/emergency status reasons. That's it, the only two reasons.
  - deleted 6d ago
Animats 6d ago
Not enough info yet. Clearly they landed too fast, but why? Was there some problem on approach which caused a fast landing? NTSB hasn't gotten to that part yet. From the timeline, one pilot knew they were too fast 90 seconds before touchdown.
- dboreham 6d ago
  From the videos there was some serious weather in the area. Also the aircraft was very light.
  - skullone 5d ago
    Serious weather? Ehhh...
fiatpandas 6d ago
>A pilot called for ﬂaps to be set to 20 degrees, and the other pilot cautioned they were too fast. The other pilot made additional comments regarding the aircraft’s excessive speed throughout the remainder of the recording. There was not a consistent verbal response to the comments about speed. Wow, The Rehearsal season 2 flashbacks. Although the show was mostly pure absurdity, the central claim of crisis in cockpit communications / lack of adequate FAA mandated training around interpersonal dynamics was spot on.
- outworlder 6d ago
  > lack of adequate FAA mandated training around interpersonal dynamics Generally, that's under the 'crew resource management' umbrella.
  - anonymars 6d ago
    This interview aged well... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bIFdbd6dmKg&t=275s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bIFdbd6dmKg&t=275s (4min 35sec) Anyway, this is the opening scene of Season 2 and it feels eerily spot on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDu0b6nxMjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDu0b6nxMjY
roger_maddux_iv 6d ago
[dead]
dboreham 6d ago
Prediction: this incident will eventually lead to the mandating of AI pilot assistance on large aircraft. AI doesn't defer to old guys.
arlattimore 6d ago
Captain Steeeve’s latest video on this tragedy is shocking, complete disregard for the aviation rules. I think he cited 11 separate instances of __mandatory__ go around, the first of which was before they were anywhere near the runway at 1000ft elevation.
- JauntyHatAngle 6d ago
  He may or may not be right here, but captain steeeve has a bad track record of baseless claims and/or bad speculation and is not a good reference due to his past failings. I would not be referencing him as a good source.
  - _moof 6d ago
    I don't know the specific items that were called out here but I can tell you, as a flight instructor, that the failure to capture the glideslope was already enough to require a go-around. The late flap settings were too. So was the high airspeed. At no point did they have a stabilized approach. There were multiple unequivocal mandatory go-around conditions before they got to the runway.
- philipwhiuk 6d ago
  It was not clear from watching how he got to 11 but the number is not particularly relevant - once you have one of them you induce many.
kashunstva 6d ago
The details of course matter; but the overarching principle put on stark display here is that if you don’t meet stabilized approach criteria (on-speed, on-glidepath, minimal necessary flight control deflections) at the 1000 ft AGL gate, go around. Yes grey areas exist but this approach never became stabilized. The whole approach was a missed opportunity to go around. I am a pilot; and although I don’t fly large transport category aircraft, this sort of procedural discipline makes all the difference no matter what you fly.
- detourdog 6d ago
  If there are factors that need to be met it seems like a red indicator light should trigger a go around.
  - stouset 5d ago
    There were quite literally multiple warning alarms that went off that should have automatically triggered this exact response.
    - detourdog 5d ago
      Then it’s a real mystery how this could happen. Will the subordinate pilot be consider culpable?
      - stouset 5d ago
        It really is. That's why anyone with an aviation background is absolutely stunned that it happened. So, so, so, so, so many opportunities to avoid this accident were actively ignored and/or bypassed. I said it elsewhere but these guys single-handedly punched their way through the entire Swiss-cheese model of safety. Given the level of negligence on display here I would not be remotely surprised if charges were filed against both pilots.
Rhaskins 6d ago
Two people in the cockpit is pointless if the junior one won't speak up. CRM only works when rank stays out of the decision loop.
pfdietz 6d ago
Waiting for the Mentour Pilot episode on this.
- roger_maddux_iv 6d ago
  I said basically the same thing at [0], but my comments from the past couple of days all got dead fast. Anyway, Mentour Pilot has a 2.5 minute short coverage, and the long form one is indeed something to look forward to. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49653533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49653533
iliaskurt 6d ago
Nathan fielder explored the relationship between pilots in season 2 of `The Rehearsal` , as much as it was comedy this is another example where his findings might have helped
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ChoGGi 6d ago
So, is 21 Air finally going to be facing issues for fudging safety? Not their first fuck up rodeo.

150 points by mckn1ght 6d ago

tldw, per Blancolirio: unstable approach, crew should have done a go around at 1000 agl but did not attempt one until it was too late, then aborted the go around.

bdamm 6d ago
The "hazardous attitudes" study in this report will be gold.
- cyanydeez 6d ago
  "Capitalism caused this crash"
  - loeg 6d ago
    Ah, yes, the Soviets never took risks. It couldn't be that humans are fallible.
    - cyanydeez 6d ago
      telling yourselves that it was "communism" that did this as opposed to the stark raving lunancy of the current American regime is hilarious misunderstanding of political ideals.
      - loeg 5d ago
        No buddy. I'm just saying it wasn't "capitalism," which was your claim. I don't think you can pin this on Trump or his admin, either.
    - rbanffy 6d ago
      If there was pressure to arrive quickly (hence the high airspeed) or not do a go-around for whatever profit-related reasons, then I would say need to profit was involved in the decision making process that led to this. When you take resource consumption out of the equation, you are more free to make lower-risk decisions.
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wanderingmoose 6d ago
I think the real question is why didn't the pilots do a go around. I bet there are underlying pressures from the airlines and/or amazon to not do a go around to avoid schedule delays or fuel costs.
- cadre_78 6d ago
  Bingo.
- deleted 6d ago
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- pseudosavant 6d ago
  Could a company that won't let delivery drivers stop to pee possibly be pushing their pilots that hard? Yes. Yes, they could.
- randerson 6d ago
  In one of the videos you can see dark clouds behind the plane. I suspect the pilots knew they'd have to divert to a different airport if they couldn't land and put pressure on themselves to not have to do that.
  - loeg 6d ago
    You can go around and try again at the same airport long before you have to divert.
- dghlsakjg 6d ago
  I've never heard of anything even close to this. Airlines in the US do not pressure pilots to avoid go arounds. Pilots in the US do not delegate life or death decisions to ops, especially since the FAA legally holds them accountable for that. All pilots are aware that they are responsible for the decision to go around or not. Any airline found to be pressuring pilots to avoid go arounds would be in a world of pain with the FAA. On cargo flights in particular timing and fuel usage are less critical than passenger flights, and a go around doesn't affect either much. Pressure to avoid go arounds would also be incredibly counter productive since go arounds exist to preserve life and property. Pilots do go arounds to avoid costly incidents. You are correct that the question is why they didn't do a go around, but I would bet a large sum of money that airline pressure to avoid go arounds was not a factor.
sscaryterry 6d ago
Yep, its also the most intuitive way to reason about it when you look at the data. Unfortunately, a bad call. I'm sure many of us would have made the same mistake.
- lisper 6d ago
  Private pilot here. No, I'm quite sure very few of you here would have made the same mistake as evidenced by the fact that literally hundreds of thousands of aircraft land successfully every day, many of them under much more adverse conditions. This is not a oh-it-could-have-happened-to-anyone kind of screwup, this is a did-this-guy-really-go-through-basic-pilot-training kind of screwup.
  - sscaryterry 6d ago
    [flagged]
    - cjbprime 6d ago
      They made a series of at least ten (and that's kind of charitable) this-must-never-happen mistakes that likely rise to the level of extraordinary criminal negligence, including ignoring checklists, alarms, configuring the plane for landing in general, and basically everything related to safety. You don't have to extend sympathy, just as you don't have to extend sympathy to drunk drivers who kill people.
      - collabs 6d ago
        I am not a pilot and I don't know anything about flying. I can go along with the idea that the pilot / crew made mistakes. So the next obvious question is how do we make sure this does not happen again? Is there anything that can be done at all here?
        cjbprime 6d ago
        Maybe ATC could be expected to revoke landing clearance on extremely obviously unstable approaches? I wonder why that didn't happen.
baggy_trough 6d ago
Obligatory Blancolirio link: https://youtu.be/dcf7n0T3D9c https://youtu.be/dcf7n0T3D9c
stevenwoo 6d ago
Pilot B kept warning pilot A(who was at the controls) that the airspeed was too high and no adjustments were made https://www.npr.org/2026/09/10/g-s1-142664/cargo-plane-miami-crash https://www.npr.org/2026/09/10/g-s1-142664/cargo-plane-miami...
- loeg 6d ago
  Yeah, but it's also Pilot B's job to take over if Pilot A isn't flying safely. He didn't.

bradly 6d ago

> There was no indication in the recorded data that speed brakes or thrust reversers were deployed. I don't know anything about flying. Is this normal? Doesn't sound like it, but I don't know why the pilots would not have used these things that sound useful.

Onavo 6d ago
Depending on the plane they need the wheels to have sufficient weight on them first. Also strangely the flaps 30 and flaps 40 call outs do not match.
- buildsjets 6d ago
  The Boeing 767 does not have a Flaps 40 setting. The "Forty" callout was an automated annunciation of the radar-altimeter measured altitude above the runway.
ofcrpls 6d ago
The lack of contact of the left wheels on the ground, which the Weight of Wheel sensor deployment depends on, as in both wheels being grounded, which the auto-speed brakes/thrust reversers depend on, worsened the whole situation as the crew seems to be unaware why they weren't losing speed after they'd 'landed'. Every single thing they could do wrong at, they did.
- bronson 6d ago
  After applying the brakes for 8 seconds, they then went to full throttle to try get back in the air for four more seconds. That's bonkers.
- Polizeiposaune 6d ago
  > Every single thing they could do wrong at, they did. There are just too many ways to screw up for that ever to be the case. For instance, they could also have been lined up to land on something other than the runway they were cleared to land on -- see Air Canada Flight 759, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759, which came within 14 feet of colliding with an aircraft on the taxiway they mistook for the runway..

toomuchtodo 6d ago

Related: Prime Air crash: 10+ mandatory go-around triggers were ignored [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49650689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49650689 - September 2026 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm6G7EOP5Qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm6G7EOP5Qc

Neywiny 6d ago

I've been watching the Flying for Money videos on this. He has interesting insight. It's a bit disappointing he just threw the data into an LLM for processing since it doesn't seem that hard to process, but otherwise he's been pretty good at bringing up likely possibilities based on Occam's razor. Mostly around negligence and most recently about junior vs senior pilot shyness vs ego. What I don't understand from his analysis though was early on he said the tail wind increased a minute before landing which is too quick to have communicated. If that's true, we need to get better about this. A minute to send a message is ages. It should be automatic between the airport and the aircraft.

teravor 6d ago

apparently they weren't even properly configured until almost touching down.

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cameldrv 6d ago

They made a whole song about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccq30minme8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccq30minme8

waterTanuki 6d ago

> [01:42] A pilot called for ﬂaps to be set to 20 degrees, and the other pilot cautioned they were too fast. The other pilot made additional comments regarding the aircraft’s excessive speed throughout the remainder of the recording. There was not a consistent verbal response to the comments about speed The interaction here is eerily similar to the pilot interactions preceding the 1997 Korean Air Flight 801 (B747) disaster in Guam [1]. It's not clear based on the NTSB update if the Captain was ignoring the First Officer or the other way around. [1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801_-_Aircraft_Accident_Report_(NTSB)/Cockpit_Voice_Recorder_Transcript https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801_-_Aircr...

YPPH 6d ago

This has all the hallmarks of a "gethomeitis" disaster, where the urge to push on overrides better judgment about going around and doing things properly.

saimiam 6d ago
A bad driver never misses an exit.

eh_why_not 6d ago

So many mistakes. A notable part is this: >> CVR: 00:15 A pilot called for a go-around. >> FDR: 00:15 Brakes were released at a groundspeed of 120 knots and throttles were increased to a value consistent with go-around thrust. >> FDR: 00:11 The throttles were reduced to idle power and the brakes were re-applied. The groundspeed was 117 knots. The throttles remained at idle, and brakes remained applied until the end of the recording. So they decided to go-around (i.e. do not land and climb immediately, going full thrust), then 4 seconds later changed their mind and went back to power idle and brakes (unclear how speed didn't increase). While they were still late in calling a go-around (they should have done it before being anywhere close to touching down due to their unstable approach), guessing those 4 seconds contributed to the disaster by a lot.

JumpCrisscross 6d ago
> While they were still late in calling a go-around (they should have done it before being anywhere close to touching down due to their unstable approach) Barring a massive tailwind, they had enough groundspeed to go around at touchdown (158 kts). I think we'll find throttling to G-A and then aborting the G-A caused the crash. If they'd committed to landing they at least wouldn't have overshot with that much energy. If they'd decided to G-A even at 00:15, they may have been well within margin to take back off.
- loeg 6d ago
  They didn't have much runway left at 00:15 and were far slower than 158 at that point. They came in far too fast, descending too rapidly; first touch was >50% down the runway, and they didn't get the left gear down, so the spoilers and brakes didn't apply until even later. Should have had a better approach; should have gone around before they even touched the ground; conditional on the bad approach and first touch, they should have gone around after the initial touch 50% down the runway. But they made the wrong choices at all of those points.
  - labcomputer 6d ago
    Yea, they couldn’t get the left gear down because they they had enough airspeed to execute a go-around! Literally 5 consecutive minutes of making 100s of wrong decisions snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. According to news reports, a magistrate judge at OSHA has been sandbagging an investigation into retaliatory firings by this airline (of pilots who reported unsafe practices with maintenance, CRM, training, scheduling, everything). I wonder if the NTSB will include that judge in the investigation. It seems like he or she has a lot to answer for. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/miami-plane-crash-21-air-safety-record/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/miami-plane-crash-21-air-safety...

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mandeepj 6d ago

The NTSB confirmed that while the pilot applied the physical wheel brakes, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) showed zero evidence that the speed brakes/spoilers ever extended. They also overshot the runway; I think those were the key mistakes that caused the accident. https://www.wisn.com/article/amazon-cargo-plane-black-box-miami/73653931 https://www.wisn.com/article/amazon-cargo-plane-black-box-mi...

xenadu02 6d ago
No, the left main was not on the ground after touchdown for some time. The aircraft will not auto-deploy the spoilers nor autobrake until it senses weight on weels. It also locks out the thrust reversers. All for obvious reasons. The left wing was lifting because they came in way too fast. 30-40 knots above final approach speed. That's why they landed so flat - if they had assumed correct flare AoA the airplane would have flown away from the runway. This is the definition of trying to "horse it onto the runway". Disclosure: Pilot on small GA aircraft but not ATP and not jet rated so YMMV. FWIW small airplanes are the same: if you're too fast they don't want to land. Bad things happen when you try to force them.
- rogerrogerr 6d ago
  Seeing a 767 wheelbarrow down a runway is so surreal. Brings back fond memories of scaring CFIs in a 172.
- rbanffy 6d ago
  > The aircraft will not auto-deploy the spoilers nor autobrake until it senses weight on weels. It also locks out the thrust reversers. All for obvious reasons. While I agree the obvious course of action would be a go-around, a manual override for when you know doing the stupid thing is the least unsafe thing to do would be handy.
  - mylies43 5d ago
    I disagree, the situations where you are not fully on the ground but still want those things are minimal, thats a go around need at that point. I bet it would be set off way more accidently then it ever would be on purpose. The systems are also highly redundant so its extremely unlikely they would fail and there would be a valid reason to override the computer. Plus even in this case it wouldn't have saved them, it was too fast too far, plus Im sure there would be some unpleasantness if both engines went full reverse while one landing gear was still not on the ground, thats gonna be some yaw right there :p . Its kinda like saying what if I need to override ABS?

xenadu02 6d ago

Pilot here but not ATP or Jet rated. When you try to land with too much energy the airplane refuses. When you get within a wingspan or two of the ground then ground effect starts giving you more and more lift. That plus excess speed means the airplane simply will not come down. To force it down you lower the nose but that can end up castering on the nose wheel, starting a PIO event (pilot-induced oscillation), or as in this case the left wing just refused to stop flying. The "quartering tailwind" is a red herring. The jet was well within its tailwind limits - most of the wind was crosswind at that point and the tailwind contribution wasn't anywhere near enough to explain what happened. When you get above glide slope things get worse as you now need to lose altitude but that increases your speed. Even if you get the speed under control if you come at the runway with a 1700-2500fpm descent rate inertia can slam you into the runway. They were coming in with way too much speed. They leveled off and got above glide slope because they were trying to bleed off enough speed to get within flap speed - flaps give you more drag which they desperately needed. I made the transition this year into a much higher performance airplane and even going from a Cessna 172 to an A36 TN Bonanza the difference is stark. You must be way further ahead of the airplane in the Bonanza or you will find yourself screaming into the airport at 170kts when your landing speed is more like 80kts. And discover you are above flap and gear extension speed with all power taken out - thus without a good way to slow down. Transport category jets are that times 100. You absolutely cannot get behind the aircraft. You plan your descents. You begin them much earlier. You pull power earlier. You add drag before speed runs away. Above all else when you're barreling in 40kts above landing speed you call a go-around and try it again. It is way too late to fix it. This accident started 30 minutes before they touched the tarmac. A complete failure of planning, of execution, and of ADM (to admit the problem and go-around).

psunavy03 6d ago
Did fly jets, although not transport-class ones. Just to hammer home that everything here is correct, and the common thread through all aircraft types is disciplined execution. You fly an approach on airspeed and/or angle of attack, and on glideslope. Period. You're either there or you're correcting to get there, and you're correcting at a point that you don't need huge oh-my-God corrections in close. If you can't do that, sucks to be you, take your waveoff like a real man or woman, and next time suck less.

cyberrock 6d ago

Looking at it from the glass-half-full perspective, I'm impressed that pilots declare go-around as often as they do. As someone who sometimes can't decide whether I should declare a production incident (even if it's not my change), I wonder if it's possible to learn that decisiveness.

cube00 6d ago
> can't decide whether I should declare a production incident A supportive culture encourages you to declare early at the first sign you feel something isn't right. The fact you're struggling to decide means it should be declared but you feel some negative force if ends up not as serious as you think. A supportive culture will work with you and if necessary down grade the priority if it can wait until a regular release cycle. It's the same rot that set into Telstra https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534127
iamtedd 6d ago
Way better to abort and try again, than commit and run the risk of something going wrong. What harm is there in doing a go around if you can? They have plenty of fuel to try multiple times, and have clearance to do so if required.
SoftTalker 6d ago
That's why there are standards that define when to go around. If you aren't stable, on glide slope, at proper airspeed, and the before-landing checklist complete at 1000 feet, a go-around is mandatory. There's no choice at that point (or should not be).
- cube00 6d ago
  > That's why there are standards that define when to go around. Greg Feith covered this well on one of the Mayday episodes, he put an American Airlines' manager on the stand during the NTSB investigation. What were the company rules for pilots flying near thunderstorms? When asked the question, he basically responded that he just didn't want his pilots flying into that type of weather. Our pilots are forbidden to enter or depart a terminal area blanketed by thunderstorms. Well, that's a very subjective call for a pilot. Pilots need boundaries. You have to set limits. If there's convective activity, that is thunderstorm activity, that's within five nautical miles of the airport, there's lightning, there's wind shear... don't go there.

thenthenthen 6d ago

It was an overrun accident of an Amazon cargo plane that killed 5 people: https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/06/us/boeing-miami-plane-overruns-runway https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/06/us/boeing-miami-plane-overrun...

ljuracz 6d ago

So sad. Multiple humans may make more serious mistakes as a group than individually could. FAR/AIM is written with blood. There could be an automated safeguard to block such landing attempts - with the capability of explicit emergency override - based on the profile of the approach or even just based on the intercom.

lenerdenator 6d ago

I know that it's not a luxury that all metro areas can implement, but if you look at airports like Denver or Kansas City, there is a very, very good reason that those airports are out in the middle of nowhere. Lots of accidents happen close to the runway, either on takeoff or landing. It's better that it be in a field than a road or building filled with people.

Peanuts99 6d ago
Isn't this usually because people don't like big jets flying over their houses.
- lenerdenator 6d ago
  The way this was dealt with historically, for better or for worse, was to put the cheap housing under the flight path. The proles were left to deal with the noise. The Harlem neighborhood of Kansas City North is a good example of this. It sits next to MKC and has a flophouse motel, a car repair shop, and little else. When aircraft got significantly faster, heavier, and larger with the advent of jet airliners, it became less of a noise issue and more of a safety issue. You can tell people to put up with noise, you can't tell them to put up with a huge airplane falling out of the sky onto their homes.

drillsteps5 6d ago

A few observations to add context (partially stolen from PPRuNe): - Pilot Flying (PF) was the Captain, 55 yo (presumably) more experienced pilot, who only got certified to fly that type (B767) in May - Pilot Monitoring (PM) was a 38 yo first officer, also not very experienced on B767 - PF made a number of mistakes, going too high, too fast (partially because he was descending too fast), not catching the glidescope on time - PM was concerned that the approach/descent was abnormal but kept his mouth shut as the more experienced captain was at the controls (Edit: apparently he did speak up but PF did not acknowledge) - PM lowered the flaps much later than required (PF orders flaps lowered and PM executes, but flaps can only be lowered when aircraft goes below certain speed) and the flaps were lowered all the way as the plane crossed the runway threshold, which likely caused plane to "float" and overshoot even further - Plane touched down too late, and left wheel even later, which likely precluded some braking mechanisms from activating (or the PF forgot to since was busy trying to put the thing down) - PM finally said "too fast, go around" but PF ignored him (or likely did not hear) - In these situations PM has the right (and obligation) to take over the controls and start go around by themselves, but he didn't, presumably because the Cap was driving - PF finally panicked and started the go around procedure, bit realized it was too late almost as the front wheel exited the runway, idled the engines and reapplied the brakes. So, yeah...

jsmith45 6d ago
This is the spitting image of old pre-CRM thinking: If I try to force the captain to go around, (or follow procedures or whatever), then i am exceeding my authority and will probably be fired. Some cultures have this sort of mentality a lot stronger than others, and it has zero place in the modern cockpit. While a captain can pull rank, they really should only ever do it with respect to the first officer if: an inexperienced first officer is trying to insist on something dangerous or forbidden by law or policy, or if the captain fully understands an FO's concerns, is fully accounting for them, and as the person ultimately responsible for safety, has determined from experience and training that the current action is safer than alternatives, and would explain but cannot explain right now for workload/emergency status reasons. That's it, the only two reasons.
- deleted 6d ago

Animats 6d ago

Not enough info yet. Clearly they landed too fast, but why? Was there some problem on approach which caused a fast landing? NTSB hasn't gotten to that part yet. From the timeline, one pilot knew they were too fast 90 seconds before touchdown.

dboreham 6d ago
From the videos there was some serious weather in the area. Also the aircraft was very light.
- skullone 5d ago
  Serious weather? Ehhh...

fiatpandas 6d ago

>A pilot called for ﬂaps to be set to 20 degrees, and the other pilot cautioned they were too fast. The other pilot made additional comments regarding the aircraft’s excessive speed throughout the remainder of the recording. There was not a consistent verbal response to the comments about speed. Wow, The Rehearsal season 2 flashbacks. Although the show was mostly pure absurdity, the central claim of crisis in cockpit communications / lack of adequate FAA mandated training around interpersonal dynamics was spot on.

outworlder 6d ago
> lack of adequate FAA mandated training around interpersonal dynamics Generally, that's under the 'crew resource management' umbrella.
- anonymars 6d ago
  This interview aged well... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bIFdbd6dmKg&t=275s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bIFdbd6dmKg&t=275s (4min 35sec) Anyway, this is the opening scene of Season 2 and it feels eerily spot on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDu0b6nxMjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDu0b6nxMjY

roger_maddux_iv 6d ago

[dead]

dboreham 6d ago

Prediction: this incident will eventually lead to the mandating of AI pilot assistance on large aircraft. AI doesn't defer to old guys.

arlattimore 6d ago

Captain Steeeve’s latest video on this tragedy is shocking, complete disregard for the aviation rules. I think he cited 11 separate instances of __mandatory__ go around, the first of which was before they were anywhere near the runway at 1000ft elevation.

JauntyHatAngle 6d ago
He may or may not be right here, but captain steeeve has a bad track record of baseless claims and/or bad speculation and is not a good reference due to his past failings. I would not be referencing him as a good source.
- _moof 6d ago
  I don't know the specific items that were called out here but I can tell you, as a flight instructor, that the failure to capture the glideslope was already enough to require a go-around. The late flap settings were too. So was the high airspeed. At no point did they have a stabilized approach. There were multiple unequivocal mandatory go-around conditions before they got to the runway.
philipwhiuk 6d ago
It was not clear from watching how he got to 11 but the number is not particularly relevant - once you have one of them you induce many.

kashunstva 6d ago

The details of course matter; but the overarching principle put on stark display here is that if you don’t meet stabilized approach criteria (on-speed, on-glidepath, minimal necessary flight control deflections) at the 1000 ft AGL gate, go around. Yes grey areas exist but this approach never became stabilized. The whole approach was a missed opportunity to go around. I am a pilot; and although I don’t fly large transport category aircraft, this sort of procedural discipline makes all the difference no matter what you fly.

detourdog 6d ago
If there are factors that need to be met it seems like a red indicator light should trigger a go around.
- stouset 5d ago
  There were quite literally multiple warning alarms that went off that should have automatically triggered this exact response.
  - detourdog 5d ago
    Then it’s a real mystery how this could happen. Will the subordinate pilot be consider culpable?
    - stouset 5d ago
      It really is. That's why anyone with an aviation background is absolutely stunned that it happened. So, so, so, so, so many opportunities to avoid this accident were actively ignored and/or bypassed. I said it elsewhere but these guys single-handedly punched their way through the entire Swiss-cheese model of safety. Given the level of negligence on display here I would not be remotely surprised if charges were filed against both pilots.

Rhaskins 6d ago

Two people in the cockpit is pointless if the junior one won't speak up. CRM only works when rank stays out of the decision loop.

pfdietz 6d ago

Waiting for the Mentour Pilot episode on this.

roger_maddux_iv 6d ago
I said basically the same thing at [0], but my comments from the past couple of days all got dead fast. Anyway, Mentour Pilot has a 2.5 minute short coverage, and the long form one is indeed something to look forward to. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49653533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49653533

iliaskurt 6d ago

Nathan fielder explored the relationship between pilots in season 2 of `The Rehearsal` , as much as it was comedy this is another example where his findings might have helped

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ChoGGi 6d ago

So, is 21 Air finally going to be facing issues for fudging safety? Not their first fuck up rodeo.