Investigators to focus on crucial landing moment in Amazon cargo plane crash at Miami airport | CBC News

U.S. federal investigators examining why an Amazon cargo jet barrelled off a runway at Miami International Airport and into vehicles, killing at least five people, are likely to focus on a crucial moment in the landing: whether the plane touched down too late to stop safely.

Video of Sunday's landing appears to show the Boeing 767 remaining airborne well down the runway before touching down. Aviation experts said investigators will seek to determine exactly where the plane landed and, if it was beyond the normal touchdown zone, why the pilots did not abandon the landing and circle back for another attempt.

Investigators will also examine the plane's speed and braking, weather and wind conditions, the aircraft's mechanical condition and other factors that could have contributed to the deadly overrun.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has sent a team led by chair Jennifer Homendy to Miami, where she is expected to give the agency's first briefing on the investigation Monday.

The aircraft overran the runway around 2 p.m. ET on Sunday after arriving from San Juan and plowed across a road used by warehouse workers and other businesses that surround the airport. Five people died, three were critically injured and two others were hospitalized with less severe injuries, officials said.

The crash, which sent thick black smoke billowing into the sky, trapped the pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit and some occupants in cars, said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Ray Jadallah. The agency said crews also had to extricate a person who was trapped under a vehicle. It wasn't immediately clear if the pilots were among those killed.

The typical landing zone for a plane is within the first 914 metres of a runway, experts said. If the cargo jet was beyond that area, it should have aborted the landing and gone around for another try, aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said.

Mary Schiavo, a pilot and former inspector general of the Transportation Department, said video posted online shows the Amazon plane floating above the runway for an extended period without flaring the nose upward to force the main landing gear onto the ground.

It wasn't raining at the time, but dark storm clouds loomed and strong winds were reported. Schiavo said that if the plane had a tail wind, that could have contributed to it floating further down the runway.

"A tail wind would certainly add to your troubles if you've already given up a good chunk of the runway by not touching down and landing right away."

The Miami airport is not equipped with arresting systems that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says have been installed at more than 120 airports countrywide to safely stop planes that do go past the end of a runway. Those beds of lightweight, crushable material at the end of a runway have been credited by the FAA with helping save at least 497 lives aboard planes that overran runways.

Miami's airport appears to be in compliance and wasn't required to have an arresting system because it has a 304-metre safety buffer at the end of its runways, said Mike O'Donnell, the FAA's former director of airport safety and accident investigations.