MIAMI — Flight data suggest an Amazon cargo plane tried to abort an unsteady landing at Miami International Airport before smashing into a van and killing five people inside, according to information investigators released Tuesday.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators will interview the pilot and co-pilot on Wednesday as they try to determine why the jet overran the runway while landing Sunday.

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at an evening news conference that they are reviewing flight data and cockpit recordings to figure out what happened in the seconds before the aircraft slammed into the van on airport property, careened through a fence and then smashed an SUV on a city street.

Homendy said investigators want to talk to the pilots before releasing anything from the cockpit voice recorder about why they appeared to briefly attempt to perform a go-around to retry the landing approach before abandoning that and trying to stop the plane. She said the data showed the thrust reversers were never used to help stop the plane.

The five people killed were all inside a van used to shuttle crews that clean planes, authorities said.

Five other people were injured. The pilot and co-pilot have been released from the hospital, Miami-Dade County Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz said Tuesday. Two people remain in critical condition, while a third is in stable condition, she said.

Both the mangled white van, its entire front end crushed, and the SUV — so badly damaged it was nearly unrecognizable — remained at the crash site Tuesday, along with the jet, which sat nose-down with a large soot mark near the P in “Prime Air.”

Expert says the pilots may have hesitated

The Amazon jet was landing after a two-hour flight from Puerto Rico as storms brewed around the Miami airport. The NTSB said the plane barreled roughly 1,300 feet (396 meters) past the end of the runway.

Former FAA official Mike O’Donnell said Tuesday the fact that the plane landed on its nose and right landing gear first demonstrates this was an unstable landing. He said the pilot might have been attempting a go-around.

Officials stand near a destroyed wing and engine as they inspect an Amazon cargo plane two days after it overshot a runway at Miami International Airport, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026, in Miami.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP

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Rebecca Blackwell/AP

“A go-around probably should have been executed sooner than that. And it seems like they hesitated,” O’Donnell said.

O’Donnell said that by the the time the crew tried to abort the landing, it may have been too late if there wasn’t enough runway left. But the interviews investigators scheduled with the pilots for Wednesday will reveal more about what they were thinking at that moment.