By Daniel Trotta
Sept 7 – Investigators with the U.S. 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 1,300 feet (396 meters) 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.
Asked to describe the scene, Homendy responded: “Utter devastation.”
“You can see on the paved surface tire marks that continue through the grass. There’s debris everywhere. The Econoline van is torn apart,” Homendy said. “The SUV, you can see airbags, the surrounding airbags. You can see components from the vehicles, both passenger vehicles and the aircraft.”
Reuters photos showed the jet with its nose on the ground and tail tilted up. The right side of the plane had what appeared to be scorch marks.
Homendy did not offer details on who was killed in the crash, but said they were from the two vehicles struck on the ground. The van contained a team from Professional Ocean Service Corp, which provides cleaning services for airlines, and the SUV beyond the airport perimeter fence was traveling on Northwest 67th Avenue, she said.
The Amazon cargo plane was on its third flight of the day, coming from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It had flown from Cincinnati to Miami, and from Miami to San Juan, earlier on Sunday before the crash at 1:53 p.m. EDT (1753 GMT), Homendy said.
Part of the NTSB investigation will examine the significance of the lack of runway material designed to stop runaway aircraft. Not every U.S. airport has an Engineered Materials Arresting System, or EMAS.
Homendy also asked the public to send in any photos or videos of the scene, saying those images could aid the investigation.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California; Editing by Michael Learmonth and Paul Simao)
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