HOUSTON — Editor’s Note: The above video was originally published March 7, 2019, when KHOU was given a first-time look at the Amazon cargo plane crash wreckage and debris collected from the Trinity Bay.
Pilots of the jumbo cargo jet that crashed into Trinity Bay in February frantically described the plane losing speed about a minute before air traffic controllers lost radar contact, according to a transcript of the recovered cockpit voice recorder released by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday.
The Boeing 767 was carrying packages from Miami to Houston for Amazon.com and the U.S. Postal Service. It crashed into shallow marshy waters at 12:39 p.m., about 34 miles southeast of Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Minutes earlier, air traffic controllers re-routed the plane around some light to heavy precipitation and advised the cockpit, “Clear on the other side of this stuff so you’ll have no problem gettin’ to the airport.”
Raw video: Cargo plane crash in Chambers County
Seconds after that transmission, pilots on board began to lose control of the aircraft.
“Whoa, (where’s) my speed, my speed,” one pilot said. “We’re stalling. Stall.”
Multiple random thumping noises could be heard in the cockpit as it was rapidly losing altitude, according to the voice recorder transcript. The plane’s flight data recorder stopped recording data with the aircraft descending at an airspeed of 433.5 knots and the autopilot engaged.
In the final minute before impact, pilots also are heard saying “Lord, have mercy,” “pull up,” and “Oh, God, Lord, you have my soul.”
The cockpit voice recorder that was recovered from the Atlas Air cargo jet that crashed in Chambers County in February.
NTSB
Watch: Investigators pore over information from voice recorder recovered from plane crash
The two pilots and one jump seat pilot were killed in the crash.
The NTSB released more than 3,000 pages of factual reports that cover various aspects of the investigation, including operations, survival factors, human performance, air traffic control, and aircraft performance. No conclusions about how or why the crash occurred were released. Those will be included in the NTSB’s final report, expected to be published in the next six months, according to an agency spokesperson.
Below is the transcript of the cockpit recorder from the flight:
Watch: A virtual view of the Trinity Bay plane crash
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