NTSB set to interview pilots of Amazon cargo plane that crashed in Miami

By Ana Maria Soler is a digital content producer for CBS Miami and the South region. Read Full Bio Updated on: September 8, 2026 / 11:17 PM EDT / CBS Miami Add CBS News on Google Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board are set to interview the pilots of the Amazon cargo plane that crashed Sunday after overshooting a runway at Miami International Airport and killing five people on the ground. The two pilots were released from the hospital and are expected to be interviewed on Wednesday morning as part of the NTSB's formal investigation, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a news conference Tuesday night. The captain of the plane is a 55-year-old man, identified as Captain Joseph Carroll, who had 7,145 flight hours as of March 31, and the first officer is a 37-year-old man, identified as Jaime Felipe Silva Molina, who had 2,655 flight hours as of Aug. 31, officials said. Both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were recovered from the crash site, Homendy had previously disclosed. "The cockpit voice recorder contained more than two hours of good quality audio," Homendy said Tuesday, adding that the flight data recorder had about 55 hours of data. Homendy said investigators will wait until after they interview the pilots Wednesday to publicly release the readout of the cockpit voice recorder. Investigators continue work to determine what caused the crash of an Amazon cargo plane at Miami International Airport on Sept. 7, 2026. Joe Raedle / Getty Images "What we need to do is talk to the crew and get their account to understand how they're manipulating the controls to get a better understanding of the situation," NTSB's lead investigator Chihoon Shin told reporters in the briefing. "... That's a key piece of information. With the cockpit voice recorder, while we have that data, crew accounts and crew interviews will help fill in some of the blanks for us." Investigators also plan to speak with air traffic controllers, dispatchers, and others who were at the scene when the crash happened.Tuesday was the first full day the NTSB team was on the ground at the crash site, and their focus was to collect perishable evidence, such as drone images, videos of the plane, and tire marks on the runways, Homendy said.The plane weighed approximately 252,000 pounds at takeoff, including about 32,000 pounds of cargo on board. The NTSB team did not find any hazardous material. Instead, the plane carried mostly contact lenses, officials said. Shin said that in the recorded data the NTSB obtained, there was no indication that speed brakes or thrust reversers were deployed. The goal of both is to help the aircraft slow down or descend more quickly. Shin, however, said he won't speculate as to the reason why they were not deployed. "We have an aircraft performance study, and we're going to do that," Shin said. "Plus, with the flight data recorder analysis, when we analyze the full list of parameters, we'll have a better idea of the aircraft performance during this landing. Was it normal? Was it not? And what was working and what was not? So I'm not gonna speculate on what should have been right now," he said. Homendy has said investigators would focus on the flight's history, the crew's experience and training, and what happened in the moments before impact.The plane, a Boeing 767-33, went down Sunday around 2 p.m. local time after it overran the runway during landing and careened into several vehicles, catching fire in the process. The plane came to rest roughly 1,300 feet from the paved runway. Aerial footage showed a debris field that included vehicles belonging to the victims. Two of Miami International's four runways remained closed Tuesday, with investigators allowing officials to reopen one of the runways partially for departures only. NTSB releases photos of flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder recovered from 21 Air LLC Flight 7598. pic.twitter.com/HpC9I2T5MR— NTSB Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) September 8, 2026 Pablo Rojas, an aviation attorney with the firm Podhurst Orseck who is not part of the NTSB investigation, reviewed footage of the crash with CBS News Miami."I think what is clearer from the video, and of course it's one video, and it's early days, is that it was coming in too fast," Rojas said. "The horizontal ground that it was covering as you see it approaching and then touching down was too much." Rojas also said something else in the video caught his attention."In addition to those piloting decisions, I think investigators will also be looking at mechanical issues," he said. "In this approach video that we've been talking about, it looks like, and it's kind of hard to tell, that the landing gear on the left side, the wheels were not making consistent contact with the ground."Rojas also raised questions about why the pilots did not abort the landing and attempt a go-around, a standard procedure in which a pilot pulls up and tries the approach again. In Tuesday's news briefing, NTSB officials said they were unable to definitively say whether a go-around had been attempted. In: Plane Crash Federal Aviation Administration Amazon National Transportation Safety Board Miami International Airport