Amazon freighter in crash was transporting contact lenses

The Amazon freighter aircraft that crashed two days ago at Miami International Airport didn’t follow normal steps for slowing down during landing and was carrying more than 32,000 pounds of contact lenses from Puerto Rico, National Transportation Safety Board officials said during a news conference Tuesday evening. A large number of manufacturers have contact lens factories in Puerto Rico. Evidence taken from the flight data recorder suggests the two pilots made a late attempt to abort the landing after touching down on the runway, Chihoon Shin, the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigator in charge. The Boeing 767-300 converted freighter hovered well past the normal runway zone and then had difficulty getting all three landing gear on the ground before running off the runway, plowing into two vehicles and fences before coming to a stop in a grassy area across a public road, leaving five people dead and several injured. The pilots did not deploy critical systems meant to slow an aircraft upon landing and, in fact, seconds before coming to rest the throttles were set to go-around thrust, he said.