---
title: 'Cockpit Transcript Breakdown: The Miami Runway Excursion Explained'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=zj_HwUIOUgs'
video_id: 'zj_HwUIOUgs'
date: 2026-09-10
duration_sec: 1488
---

# Cockpit Transcript Breakdown: The Miami Runway Excursion Explained

> Source: [Cockpit Transcript Breakdown: The Miami Runway Excursion Explained](https://youtube.com/watch?v=zj_HwUIOUgs)

## Summary

The video analyzes the NTSB's minute-by-minute transcript of the cockpit voice recorder from the Amazon Prime cargo jet crash at Miami International. Captain Steve breaks down the landing sequence, correcting common misconceptions about speed brakes and reverse thrusters, and highlights the crew's unstable approach.

### Key Points

- **NTSB Transcript Release** [00:00] — The NTSB released a minute-by-minute transcription of the cockpit voice recorder from the Amazon Prime cargo jet crash.
- **Misconception About Reverse Thrusters** [00:19] — Many people believe reverse thrusters didn't deploy because there was no weight on wheels, but there's more to the story.
- **Speed Brakes in the Air** [00:45] — Speed brakes can be deployed in the air, contrary to popular belief.
- **Nose Gear Touchdown** [01:41] — The nose gear touched down before the main gear, which is a poor landing technique in a large jet.
- **Cockpit Warnings** [22:17] — The crew received multiple warnings like 'sink rate' and 'pull up' during the approach.
- **Warnings as Symptoms** [24:16] — The warnings are indications of an unstable approach, not the cause of the accident.

## Transcript

NTSC has just released a minute-by-minute transcription of what was said on the cockpit voice recorder for that Amazon Prime cargo jet that crashed, operated by 21 Air, landing and unfortunately leading to a runway excursion off of runway 30 at Miami International.
In this video, I'd like to comment on a clarifying factor here that Captain Steve brings up. Because a lot of people in my comments have been suggesting, hey, you know, weight on wheels. We didn't have weight on wheels.
That's why the reverse thrusters didn't deploy. But there's more to the story here that's weird. And I'm going to break down the difference between those speed brakes and reverse thrusters.
Because a lot of people think you can't deploy speed brakes in the air, but you actually can. We'll talk about that in just a moment. Let me play this clip here from Captain C, then I'm going to add context,
and then we're going to break down the line-by-line that the NTSB just came out with. This is a line-by-line, again, of the cockpit voice recorder, and so we'll cover that. First, let's play this right here and remind you kind of the setting that we have.
In fact, we'll go back even maybe another 20 seconds or so, and we'll play it from about five minutes into this last video at a 1x playback speed. Here we go. Right here, I want to show you something.
The nose gear is touched down, and they verify that from a flight data recorder, the NTSB does. The nose gear is touched down, and they say at the same time is the right main mount. I'm here to tell you that nose gear is just now touching the runway, and see the choke on that right main mount?
They haven't touched down yet on the main mouth. So it's almost simultaneously, but that's a horrible landing technique. Horrible. You don't want to touch down on the nose first ever in a large jet like this.
I'm just going to make a small comment here because I think just for a viewer to clarify this, I know Captain Steve knows this and he full respect him. That's not a landing technique. It's a land with the front wheel down.
He did mention that's a horrible landing technique. I just want to make it clear, it's not a technique. You were supposed to land flared. You're landing with the jet coming in like this. Now, with a piston aircraft, it's really interesting.
With a piston aircraft, you're going to come in on a piston, and you're almost pointing at the numbers at the end of the runway, and then you do this flare at the end to get those back wheels down first. With a jet, you're actually not doing the point at the runway
and then kind of rotate into flare right at the end. you're actually coming in relatively flat and slightly flat, and then you're going to flare even more, and then you're going to land on those back wheels first.
Worth noting, that's a really big transition when you go from flying piston to flying jet. It's much more of a subtle flare than a piston aircraft, and there is no technique that I'm aware of, at least, where you're landing flat.
This is generally a flat landing, and in this case where, if you're landing on the front wheel first, then that's bad, because you might be more likely in that case to bounce. We didn't get a bounce here. You don't want to bounce. That's an automatic go around.
In fairness, if they bounce here, maybe that would have been good because they could have initiated a go around earlier. But that's not the comment I want to add here. It has to do with this weight on wheel sensor and what happened with reverse thrust.
Let's play that. They touched down the nose first. Now you're going to see the right main mount flatten out as the weight comes on it. But that left main mount, the one over here, never tilts.
It stays tilted, tilted, tilted until almost the shot is completely gone. They're way down the runway before we get any glimpse of that last main mount touching down. Now, for the spoilers to deploy on the top of the wing and all the weight of the aircraft
to push down on those wheels and make the brakes most effective, you have to have the spoilers armed in the cockpit. You have to have the power levers pulled all the way back to idle.
Those two things have to be satisfied. And both main mounts, the tilt sensor has to be level. It has to be on the ground and wait on the airplane. Then the spoilers will pop up. Then the brakes become most effective. And those spoilers will kill the lift over the wings.
Keep in mind, this is what we're going to start with a quick difference. The spoilers that pop up when they're armed, they're automatic when you land. and you get that weight on wheels. So those should be coming up automatically.
They have been disarmed during the go-around attempt because we have such a wobbly landing? Of course. But what surprised me is that we didn't even initiate those reverse thrusters at two different moments. Once, at the beginning,
when we really started to kind of get down with that wobbly and shaky landing. And the second opportunity would have been after they rejected the go-around at about 11 seconds before impact.
Now, why does that matter? It matters because there are two points of time where reverse thrusters could have been deployed. Neither time they were. In other words, they weren't. There was no indication that reverse thrusters were deployed at any point.
Now, it's also worth noting, just on speed brakes quickly, can you use these in the air? Yes. You're just not going to use them when you have a certain flap setting because that implies you're coming in for a landing, especially since your flaps are going to overspeed if you're too fast,
so you're not going to be deploying flaps while you're up cruising. Can you now deploy speed brakes while you're up cruising and you need to get down fast? Absolutely. Worth knowing that. If you're up at 35,000 feet and you need to pull an emergency descent,
you can pop those speed brakes nose over and come spiral down. These are very normal techniques that are taught to actually utilize those speed brakes. Then when you're coming into landing, you stop pulling out those slats. Typically, the system will automatically stow the seed brakes until you get weight on wheels again.
Now, why does this matter regarding reverse clusters? My opinion has to do with the communication issue and we going to see that in the transcript in just a moment but I want you to keep hearing what Steve says here According to the NTSB report you going to hear from his own ears the spoilers never deployed and they never deployed reverse
Neither one, according to the FOIA data recorded. Correct. That's what we covered in the video yesterday that we also made on this topic. And what I noticed is I got these comments here, things like this. I heard reverse did not because the left back wheel was still preventing the sensor to kick in to validate safe braking.
I don't know much about the aircraft, but it makes sense, no? That's the problem. There are actually two opportunities where reverse thrusters could have been deployed. At the beginning of the landing sequence, yes, we had the weight on wheel issue.
Then we had the go-around sequence where at 15 seconds before impact, we decided we're going to gun it. We're going 120 knots, go for a go-round. Four seconds of engine spooling got us negative three knots.
We literally went from 120 knots, nautical miles per hour, down to 117 after going full gas for four seconds. That's because the engines, unlike a fast electric car or a piston aircraft,
take, on an aircraft like this, seven to nine seconds to spool up before you get dropped. So they got negative three knots of thrust, or essential forward momentum, negative three knots of speed in those four seconds they tried to go around.
Immediately at the end of those four seconds, at 11 seconds, they applied brakes. And at this very moment, they had another opportunity to go reverse.
So that is a very important distinction to make. There were two opportunities to deploy reverse thrusters. One, on landing. But that was too wobbly.
Yes, weight on wheel sensor wouldn't activate your reverse thruster. Not that there was any indication they even tried to activate reverse thrusters. The second opportunity would have been the very moment they canceled the go-around.
Remember, 15 seconds before the crash, they decided to go around. So they call go around at 15 seconds before, well, they activated go around, we'll talk about the call outs in just a moment,
some issues with those, at 120 knots. Four seconds later, we get brakes, and we kill throttle four seconds later, well, we're at 117 knots. By seven seconds, we get lateral deviation,
potentially suggesting we hit something or we're going off the end of the runway, which is almost the same thing, given that the navigation equipment they hit was at the end of the runway. And I mean, like, not the end of the usable runway,
either, like at the end end of the road. Okay, or paid surface, if you will. Now, between this moment right here, as we're going, cancel go around on the brakes. That would have been an opportunity
right here to activate the reverse thruster, because obviously at this point we have weight on wheels. We ain't flying, we know that, because we're still slowing down. We could see on the
video at this point in the runway where clearly all tires are on the ground. This fourth second here, this is why I mentioned, this is the oddity. And so I think, I'd love to hear Captain C's opinion on this.
Why during this moment were reverse thrusters not activated? I think, and it's my speculation, but I think A, there was a true communication issue, and B, panic at this point.
At this point, it's like, whoops, we got a little oopsies here, and it's much more than a little oopsie. But let's look at the cockpit voice recorder because there's something to be desired here. So this is the cockpit voice recorder.
Here's what we got. Six minutes before, pilot calls the flaps. 4-18-4, cleared runway 3-0. 2-53-4, flaps 5. 2-37, gear down. 2-14, pilot calls flaps 15.
1-42, pilot calls flaps 20. 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.
Alright, just a little bit of sort of human involvement here. This has happened on many a training flight. I've been in the shoes. Where we're like, we're high, you're diving in, and you think it's recoverable.
9 out of I would almost say 98 out of 100 times they're recoverable and you're actually stable before you're going to land otherwise you're going to land
it's not horribly uncommon to be high on final and have to adjust and it's not horribly uncommon for people to chase it and it's also not uncommon for a co-pilot to go
we're high, why? because you're flying the aircraft There's an autopilot disconnect at the very next reading there, 123. Your hand's flying the aircraft. Autopilot disconnect, right?
Super normal for the final portion of the flight, especially on an older aircraft, and an aircraft that's not certified for autoland. Even what I flew was not certified for autoland. We could get down to about 200 feet, and we had to take over.
So very normal. Again, also very normal for the person who's not holding the yoke and the throttle as you're coming in, you've got hand on yoke, hand on throttle, you're trying to balance
throttle for height at this point, right? And your directional control and your yaw, there's a lot to control here. So you're in the reverse area of command, so you use throttle for height
when you're coming in for landing, it's a whole weird thing. But anyway, there's a lot. And so often, the pilot flying isn't able to look at that, like, do their scan onto their speed
icon as much because they're dealing with so much. It is max workload at that moment. And I'm not making excuses for anyone, but it would be very normal for the company to go we high we fast and then go got it high fast adjusting And then they say it again we still high we still high and then not seeing the response because it like we on the same page we working on it
Not unusual here so far. Sound system was autopilot, then we hear 1,000, then we hear sink rate, sink rate. That's the dive we saw. Remember on that approach coming in, we see that aircraft kind of diving in.
As Captain Steve played the same video too, we see this sort of last moment dive. That's going to be right here. Oops, wrong angle, hello. That's going to be this right here.
You're diving in, right? You're going to get sink rate and terrain on something like that. I've been in those shoes. Literally, I will pull up a video that I have of me being in those shoes. We won't go through it right now.
But you still end up getting, you know, an okay landing. So that's going to be this video. We'll play that here towards the end. We'll save that for later. So, still, nothing crazy. We know we're just fast, and that's the problem.
Can we actually recover at this point? Sink rate, sink rate, 500. Sink rate, sink rate, 100. Okay, minimums. You should have been stable two miles out by your final approach base.
Corrections in heavy crosswinds, dealing with adjustments going in, day in the life of a pilot. Super normal to deal with this. at minimum when we're still pointing
at the ground and we're not stable my goodness this would have been a fantastic opportunity to go around but remember some of the elements that we've included in the summaries that we've been talking about
is that not only did the thunderstorm just pass we didn't have water flooded we got the gusty wind we got a small tail wind we got the rapid descent coming in fast not only do we have all of these elements but then we don't even hit our landing bars
This would have been a good opportunity right here to go around at minimum. Second opportunity to go around, I mean, first opportunity to go around would have been a final approach phase. We're not stable, let's go around and do it again. Super normal for people to adjust, especially in dusty, stressful conditions.
Next opportunity, minimums would have been a great opportunity to go around. This is usually an opportunity where you'll hear the minimums call out, which is likely the aircraft minimums. You can also hear that generally from a co-pilot as well.
They might shout it. And they indicate here, this is what I think is very interesting, they say, pilot calls for flaps to be set to 30. Now, why we are adjusting flaps after minimums are being called blows my mind.
Minimums, at the very last moment, are an opportunity to say, okay, if we were not stable at the final approach fix, you know, two to four miles out, that's our last chance to save this landing.
Did we adjust between then and now? And that's, like, already edgy, right? That's already, all right, all right, we can do this, we can do this. At minimums, and then you change a flap setting,
which then changes your wind profile right before landing? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That was not good. What I am noticing here is at no point is there an indication that they called for a go-around.
Instead, you get pilot calls for flaps to be set to 30. Why? After we get too low, terrain, too low, terrain, four times, 40, too low, terrain,
because our sink rate is too fast, right? We're coming in too fast. That's why you're getting the too low terrain call-out. you wouldn't get to low terrain if you weren't too fast. And I'll show you. In this video, I'm going to show you.
I was literally too fast, and we were not stable, but we got stable before minimum. I'll show you that. And I want you to see that as just a real experience. Sounds similar to aircraft touching down. Pirate calls for go-around.
They didn't call for the go-around when they touched down 31 seconds before the accident, and they missed the landing bar by what looked like 2,000 feet. I think they floated over to like 3,000. They didn't call for a go-around here.
They didn't apply speed brakes in that first gap right there, around where I'm highlighting it. This, because we don't have weight on wheels, we're all over the place, right? But remember this, oh, look at this. Remember right here, we have the pilot call for a go-around.
What we heard yesterday from the NTSB was that they canceled the go-around at 11 seconds. Now, it's actually really incredible. In fact, yeah, there it is.
See, look at that. 11 seconds. Throttles were reduced to idle power and brakes were reapplied. That right there would have been an opportunity to activate reverse thrusters again. But we didn't have that happen.
I think now we found out why. Remember how I thought maybe, probably because they were panicked at that point? Because they told us that there wasn't a lateral acceleration change for 4 seconds.
That's the update we got yesterday. from 11 to 7 seconds, that's when we got the lateral change. Take a look at this. They actually indicate here, we started getting to the unpaid portion of the runway 10 seconds before the accident,
which means just one second after they killed the go-around, they were already leaving the paid portion. Now, could they have still activated reverse thrusters at this point,
and could that have slowed down the aircraft enough to prevent the tragedy that we saw in the NTSB footage? Possibly. It could have been done because we had weight on wheels.
Would it have made a difference? We don't know. At that point, it was probably too late. But let's go look at the drone footage. So this is the NTSB footage that was released. It appears that the drone footage shows
the aircraft clearly let see here here the aircraft breaking So it unclear and my assumption is that they would have canceled their go given that we have tire marks here and that the earliest they show here Let me see here Let just play this for a moment a little bit They don have audio on this Yeah they don Yeah So brakes are applied during
this portion. That's probably the final second right here. And could they have deployed reverse thrusters here? Yeah. Again, would it have made a difference at that point? Pretty panicked situation? Maybe. Because they still ended up crashing into a vehicle at 65 miles an hour.
That's if we go right here. This is where it appears they end up hitting the white Econoline van where five people died. And then this is, I believe, this is the airport road, because you can see the airport fence in here. This, either on this side or this side, is where the Toyota SUV
ends up getting impacted. Now, you can watch this video in full, although it's quite dramatic. It's the, it's on the NTSB YouTube channel, you can see that in detail here, but we'll go
over here, this is what the SUV looks like, so the front got just removed, essentially, completely disassembled here, and then this portion looks like the front of the Econoline here, it almost looks like it got hit by the motor, or the jet engine, almost as if it
crushed the side of it here, and folded the front of the car in, I don't think the front over here would have been survivable at all. Any surviving that you had was likely in the back. And then, of course, this is our spokeswoman. I think she's awesome. She is a respectable
bureaucrat. Big fan. You don't really hear from the other people that much, so I don't have anything to say, but big fan of that. So that gives us a lot of color here, but again, notice when we look at this, we don't get that second reverse thrusters activation.
my opinion is, oh my gosh, we're in the grass. It's like death is flashing in front of your eyes. We're not stopping. I'm sure there were a lot of, you know, bad things said in those seconds here.
Okay, so now we need to put together how, potentially, someone could argue that it would actually be okay to land when you're getting all of these oral warnings.
Oral words. All right. Let me show you this, because I do think if I have footage that's relatable to the situation, I think it's sometimes worth pointing out. This was the footage here.
So let's get this coming into land. We've got audio here. And now for the part where I get yelled at, I'm going to give you a little bit of a close-up into the cockpit
so you can see at this point we've already got the power out, because we are a little fast. So we're trying to slow down here. Forgive me for the cable in the unit, but we're going about 140 here, okay? We want to be a little bit slower, so I want you to see that.
And this is a tiny airport, no tower, no autopilot. This is pure visual. Flying a jet, baby. Flaps full, three green. Lights on? Yep. All right, tour line, y'all. Embers off. Landing gear.
Out there green. Flaps are full. Airspeed's flowing. Now, you can even see our flaps are full right here. Full flaps there. Hyper Valley traffic. Phoenix is turning a two mile final runway to two.
Hyper Valley. Let's keep that power out all the way. Oh yeah, it's still out. It was out. It was out.
I want you to hear that. Like, it's... I feel weird playing it because I'm like, oh, it's still out. But it's like, that's the communication you're going to get with Pets. It's like, God, I'm on it. I agree with you. I'm acknowledging it's out.
Paul, we're about to get yelled at about some more sink rating, and we are not that high above the ground. Starting to come in here. Sink rate. Pull up. Go around.
Wind shear ahead. Unstable approach. Sink rate. All of them. You're good. You're good. 500. He's trying to get our stable. Probably two twos all year. See?
That's a huge difference. we are 500 feet above the ground on a tight, surrounded by mountains area, clear weather, we're the only ones there, visual approach,
but we're fully configured way before we even get into the situation. We're, okay, you know, we're getting some warnings here, fully configured. We got 500 feet, fully configured, airspeed trending down,
everything's good, stable for a smooth landing. They got the 100 call out and then said flaps.
You see the speed warning was up again, but we do end up slowing down. See, that's actually interesting. We ended up slowing down so much, we had to add power back in.
And you'll see a little bit of that with my hand right here. If you want to watch closer. Maybe just so we don't think. There you go. There you go. Runway's made.
There we go. Yeah. So that was a tough one. But it's, I bring it up just as a learning example.
You know, a lot of people, I feel like they're going to look at this and they're going to see, sink rate, unstable approach, were in this case. Terrain! Terrain! Too low! Terrain!
We've identified where the issues were in this. It's not those call lines. They are an indication of an unstable approach and a plenty of opportunities to have success.
And they say not advertise these things in total. I feel like nobody else knows about this. We'll try a little advertising and see how it goes. Congratulations, man. You've done so much. People love you. people look up to you Kevin Passler Fairfinance Landers
and YouTube meet Kevin always great to get your take