Amazon Air’s Boeing 767 Crash In Miami: What The Final 30 Seconds Of Flight Data Reveal

A few days ago, we saw a horrific aircraft accident at Miami International Airport (MIA), whereby a Boeing 767 belonging to cargo operator 21 Air (operating on behalf of Amazon Air) overran the runway, and ended up breaking through the airport perimeter fence, hitting two cars, and claiming five lives.

Little about this accident makes sense, because it just seems so avoidable. While it will take some time for an investigation to be fully performed, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has just released some more details about what happened, and it’s beyond puzzling.

Boeing 767 slowed then, then sped up, then slowed down

NTSB investigators managed to recover the flight data recorder for the Boeing 767 involved in the accident, and have already analyzed some of that data. They’ve just released the details of the final 30 seconds of the flight data recorder. Here’s the timeline, with times being the amount of time until the end of the recording of the flight data recorder:

• -0:30: the nose gear and right main landing gear touched down at a ground speed of 158 knots
• -0:23: the brakes were applied, and the plane was at a speed of 146 knots
• -0:19: the left main landing gear touched down, and the plane was at a speed of 134 knots
• -0:15: the brakes were released and the plane was at a speed of 120 knots, and the throttles “increased to values consistent with go around thrust”
• -0:11: the throttles were reduced to idle, the brakes were reapplied, and the plane was at a speed of 117 knots
• -0:07: the plane had a lateral, longitudinal, and vertical acceleration change, and was at 96 knots
• -0:00: the plane had a final ground speed of 65 knots

Can we just give the NTSB credit for their consistently exceptional work? We’ve now learned more in 72 hours about this accident than we’ve learned in around 15 months about the crash of Air India flight AI171.

What was going on with the Amazon Air Boeing 767 pilots?

Within hours of the accident, we saw a clear video of the plane’s final approach and landing, and obviously it looked a bit off — the plane was coming in fast, it only touched down way down the runway, and its left main gear initially stayed in the air.

Of course it’s easy to retroactively say “well that should’ve been a go around,” especially when we know what the outcome was. Accidents often happen due to a combination of factors, so one wonders if there was something wrong with the aircraft. But the pilots hadn’t declared any sort of emergency, so it’s hard to look at that and come up with any reasonable scenario where a go around wasn’t the answer.

This latest data very much supports that theory. It’s understandable that the reverse thrusters weren’t deployed before the left main gear touched down. But what’s really most concerning here is that 15 seconds after initially making contact with the runway, the brakes were released, and throttles were increased to values consistent with go-around thrust, only for the throttles to be reduced again four seconds later.

The mind can’t even begin to comprehend this. Unless there was some glitch that triggered an increase in thrust, it sure sounds like the pilots couldn’t decide whether to land or go around. Honestly, if they had just committed to either option, it probably wouldn’t have had fatal consequences. But when you’re touching down way late, you really don’t have the luxury of taking forever to make a decision.

If this was really a case of the pilots not being able to decide, that points to terrible crew resource management (CRM). 21 Air doesn’t exactly have a great reputation when it comes to its safety culture, so maybe that’s not all that surprising. It also has to be pointed out that a thunderstorm was rolling in, so one wonders if get-there-itis was a factor.

So, who were the pilots? There wasn’t a whole lot of Boeing 767 experience between them. The 55-year-old captain was a former Army Black Hawk pilot, he worked at regional airline SkyWest for around a year, and then he worked as a Boeing 737 captain at Kalitta Charters for around seven years. He only got his Boeing 767 type rating in June 2026, and this accident happened within three months.

The first officer was a 37-year-old with rather little experience. He was a flight instructor until 2023, then he spent three months as a first officer at regional airline SkyWest (one wonders if he even made it through training, since that’s not a lot of time?), then he worked as an MD-83 first officer at World Atlantic Airlines for around a year (the carrier largely performs deportation flights, etc.), and then he started at 21 Air in early 2025.

Obviously there just wasn’t a lot of 767 experience, and you’d hope for a better pairing. I think what’s going on here is that Amazon gave 21 Air a big contract in recent years, which greatly expanded the carrier’s 767 flying. So the airline has had to greatly increase its pilot base over the past couple of years. It’s not exactly the best paying or most reputable carrier, so it sounds like experience was lacking.

For the record, due to the number of racists who came out and suggested the pilot on the radios having an accent might explain the crash, keep in mind that the pilot communicating isn’t the pilot flying. So it was the 55-year-old former Army Black Hawk pilot at the controls.

Bottom line

We’re already learning more details about the fatal crash in Miami, involving an Amazon Air Boeing 767. According to the NTSB, 15 seconds after initially making contact with the ground, the plane’s brakes were released and the throttles were increased, only for that to be reversed seconds later.

What’s wild here is that this almost certainly wouldn’t have been fatal if the pilots had just committed to either landing or going around. But waffling like this is a problem. The captain at the controls of this flight was a former Army Black Hawk pilot, though he had only been certified on the Boeing 767 within the past few months.

What do you make of these accident details?