Amazon Cargo Jet Crashes at Miami Airport, Killing Five

A cargo jet operated by Amazon crashed at Miami International Airport on Sunday, killing five people. The plane, a Boeing 767-300, skidded off the runway and slammed into a van full of cleaning workers, an airport fence, concrete vehicle barriers, and an SUV before finally stopping and catching fire.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), investigators have recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the tail of the crashed jet. The black boxes captured over 400 streams of data, which has raised questions about what happened in the cockpit as the plane careened off the runway.

The NTSB said that two of the landing gears, the back right and nose wheels, touched down on the runway 30 seconds before the recording ended. However, the third set of landing gear, on the back left of the plane, didn't touch down until nine seconds later, which is unusual for aircraft designed to land with their back wheels first.

Additionally, 15 seconds before the recording ended, the brakes on the wheels were released, and the throttles were moved to full take-off power. Four seconds later, the throttles were brought back to idle, and the brakes were reapplied. It's unclear why this sequence of events happened, but it suggests that the pilots may have detected a problem and tried to take off again to circle the airport for another landing attempt.