Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation expert, tells PEOPLE about the questions that investigators might have posed to the pilots about the deadly Sept. 6 crash

NEED TO KNOW

• Preliminary information about the Sept. 6 Amazon Air cargo plane crash from the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder was shared by the NTSB this week
• Five people on the ground were killed in the crash, and the plane’s pilots survived
• Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation expert, tells PEOPLE what investigators are likely to look for in examining the cause of the crash

As investigators continue to look into the deadly Sunday, Sept. 6, Amazon Air cargo plane crash at Miami International Airport that claimed five lives, aviation experts wonder why the pilots would proceed to land the Boeing 767-300 even as it was traveling “too fast” before it overran the runway.

“The big question is with all the cues that were available to [the pilots] that something wasn’t quite right with that approach: why did they continue to land?” says Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation expert and a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who has been in the safety and accident investigation industry for the last 28 years.

Preliminary information about the crash was shared by the NTSB on Tuesday, Sept. 8 and Wednesday, Sept. 9. Data from the plane’s flight data recorder (FDR) shows that the aircraft touched down before the pilots made several changes to the brakes and engine power during the final seconds of the flight, NTSB investigator Chihoon Shin said during a Tuesday press conference.

The plane’s nose and right landing gear touched the runway about 30 seconds before the recording ended, while it was traveling at 158 knots (approximately 181 mph). The pilots began braking several seconds later, when the plane was traveling at 146 knots (about 168 mph), according to Shin.

The aircraft’s left landing gear then touched down as its speed dropped to 134 knots (about 154 mph). A few seconds later, the pilots released the brakes and increased the engine power to a level consistent with attempting a go-around, which would mean stopping the landing and taking off again, Shin said.

About four seconds later, the pilots reduced the engine power and began braking again as the plane traveled at 117 knots (approximately 134 mph). They continued braking until the end of the recording, according to Shin. 

In the final seconds, the plane’s movements changed as its speed continued to drop. The aircraft was traveling at 96 knots (about 110 mph) seven seconds before the recording ended, with a final recorded ground speed of 65 knots (around 74 mph). 

On Wednesday, Sept. 9, the NTSB provided some information recovered from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR). Its transcript revealed that for almost two minutes, one of the pilots cautioned that the aircraft was going “too fast” as it approached the Miami airport.

The NTSB stated that the pilot in question “made additional comments regarding the aircraft’s excessive speed throughout the remainder of the recording.” 

The victims killed in the incident had been in two vehicles that were struck by the aircraft as it overran the runway, Homendy previously confirmed during a press conference on Monday, Sept. 7. The two pilots, who were aboard the plane, survived the crash.

Brickhouse tells PEOPLE that the release of the preliminary information is both a “blessing” and a “curse.”

“A lot of people who aren’t trained in accident investigation are going to see that preliminary information from the CVR and the FDR (flight data recorder) and automatically blame pilot error or point to the pilots,” he explains. “For me as a trained investigator, I see the release of that information as just a piece of the puzzle. There’s still a lot of questions that have to be answered.”

He says that investigators look at three overarching areas when examining an accident: the aircraft, the environment that the plane was flying in, and the human element. “So looking at the CVR and the FDR to the untrained eyes, [it] is really easy to blame the pilots, but it’s not that simple,” he says. “You have to look into motivations, you have to look into decision making, you have to look into the safety culture at this company that they were flying for.”

Brickhouse also mentions that, based on video, there were storms in the area. “What role did those storms play?” he says. “Did they [the pilots] in fact land with the tailwind, which would make them faster than what they should have been? So there are a lot of different questions and understanding why humans make the decisions that they do is going to be a very important part of this investigation.”

On whether the pilots could have had time to slow down the plane on approach or just abort the landing, he says, based on the preliminary FDR information, the pilots touched down and then increased the throttles, which would be consistent with possibly trying to do a go-around. “And then for some reason, they decreased the throttles and tried to get the aircraft slowed down,” he says. 

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Brickhouse poses the questions possibly asked by the investigators to the pilots, such as “‘What was the prescribed landing speed? How fast were you going? Why didn’t you initially go around after you touched down? Why did you increase the throttles?’ These are all questions that have probably been asked already by NTSB investigators.”

He also says that planes overshooting runways do happen. “We typically see it in the general aviation community more so than in the commercial aviation community,” Brickhouse says. “But if there’s a runway overrun, you have to look at the pilots. Then you look at the aircraft. And then the third component would be, looking into the environment that the aircraft was operating in.”

“At the end of the day, it could end up being pilot error that caused this accident,” he adds. “But as a safety professional, saying an accident was caused by pilot error really doesn’t say a lot. What were the dynamics? There’s a lot of nuance involved in that.”

The NTSB’s preliminary report is usually furnished 30 days after an accident and is followed by a final report that can take about a year to two years to complete. 

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