Crew recording on doomed Amazon cargo jet reflects aircraft’s loss of control

Bloomberg

Recorded conversations by pilots on a cargo jet carrying packages for Amazon.com Inc. that crashed last month near Houston reveal they began losing control of the aircraft about 18 seconds before it slammed into a shallow bay, investigators said.
The communications captured on the cockpit sound recorder were “consistent with a loss of control of the aircraft,” according to a press release issued by the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB recovered the crash-proof cockpit recorder and another black box storing flight data in recent days and brought them to its lab in Washington for analysis.
The press release, offering a first glimpse of what happened on the Boeing Co. 767-300 as it was preparing to land at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport Feb 23, still doesn’t explain its mysterious, abrupt dive. The second recorder contained detailed data from the accident flight as well as 16 previous ones, but none of its contents were revealed in the NTSB statement.
Atlas Air Flight 3591 dove roughly 6,000 feet (1,829 meters) and plunged into a shallow bay as it was descending and preparing to move around a line of storms ahead. The impact shattered the plane and killed all three aboard: two Atlas pilots and one from a regional airline who was catching a ride. There was no emergency radio call from the cockpit.
Atlas was one of three cargo carriers flying a fleet of 50 aircraft for Amazon, according to a press release from the online retailer in December. Atlas is owned by Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings Inc.
A video recorded from a jail about a mile from the crash showed the plane’s final five seconds before it smashed into the water, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said in a briefing February 24. The plane was in “a steep descent, steep nose-down attitude” and there was no evidence the pilots tried to “turn or pull up at the last moments,” Sumwalt said.