An Amazon cargo airplane barreled off a runway at Miami Worldwide Airport on Sunday, killing no less than 5 individuals and injuring 5 others because it struck autos and was engulfed in flames, authorities mentioned.
The plane overran the runway round 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and plowed throughout a street utilized by warehouse employees and different companies that encompass the airport. 5 individuals had been killed, three critically injured and two others hospitalized with much less extreme accidents, Miami-Dade County officers informed a information convention.
Miami officers mentioned Sunday afternoon that it was too quickly to say whether or not the individuals who died had been on board the airplane or within the autos the airplane hit.
Photograph Credit score: AFP
The crash, which despatched thick black smoke billowing into the sky, trapped the pilot and copilot within the cockpit and a few occupants in vehicles, mentioned Miami-Dade Rescue Hearth Chief Ray Jadallah. The company mentioned crews additionally needed to extricate an individual who was trapped underneath a automobile.
The crash halted flights on the busy journey hub for a lot of the afternoon. Some 200 emergency personnel responded, discovering the airplane with heavy flames and smoke from a posh engine compartment hearth, the division mentioned. Firefighters used foam from specialised airport firefighting items to extinguish the hearth, and crews had been nonetheless coping with a gas leak on the airplane hours later.
The Prime Air airplane got here to relaxation beside a roadway close to two semi-trucks, photographs confirmed. The plane seemed to be resting on its stomach and was largely intact regardless of the hearth.
Footage reveals the second that the 21 Air Flight 7598 overran the runway and crashed at Miami Worldwide Airport. Per reviews, no less than 5 people are useless with an unspecified variety of accidents. pic.twitter.com/cOKhKwoTwh
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) September 7, 2026
The trigger had but to be decided, and it was not clear if climate had performed a task. Thunderstorms and wind gusts as much as 30 mph (48 kph) had been recorded within the space on the time, based on the Nationwide Climate Service.
The flight had been operated by 21 Air, a cargo provider primarily based in North Carolina. The 32-year-old Boeing 767 was initially constructed to hold passengers and flew for a number of airways for greater than twenty years earlier than being transformed to a cargo airplane in 2015, based on flight-tracking website Flightradar24.
Greater than 160 flights had been canceled and almost 325 delayed by late Sunday, based on FlightAware, an internet site that tracks flight disruptions. Officers from Orlando Worldwide Airport, greater than 200 miles (320 km) north of Miami, mentioned some flights had been diverted there.
The Nationwide Transportation Security Board mentioned it was sending a crew to Miami led by Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy to research.
Amazon mentioned in a press release that it will cooperate with any investigation.
“We’re heartbroken to study that 5 individuals misplaced their lives in right now’s incident at Miami Worldwide Airport,” the corporate mentioned. “Our deepest sympathies exit to the households, family members, and all these affected by this devastating loss.”
Final yr, a UPS airplane crashed after shedding its engine whereas accelerating down the runway at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali Worldwide Airport. The crash killed all three pilots and 12 individuals on the bottom. Twenty-three extra had been injured.
Aviation security professional Steve Arroyo mentioned {that a} 767 cargo plane would sometimes be staffed solely by a pilot and copilot on home flights. A 3rd pilot can be added for a world flight, and a long-haul worldwide flight would require a fourth pilot.
Arroyo, a retired longtime United Airways pilot, mentioned he needs to know whether or not the Amazon airplane landed within the landing zone of the runway, and if it was past that space why it did not merely abort that touchdown and go round to line up for one more try. Usually, the touchdown zone is inside the first 3,000 ft (914 meters) of a runway.
“Did the plane land inside the required landing zone?” he requested. “If it did, what occurred?”
Mary Schiavo, who’s a pilot and former inspector normal of the Transportation Division, mentioned that video posted on-line of the touchdown reveals the Amazon airplane floating above the runway for an prolonged interval with out flaring the nostril upward to power the primary touchdown gear onto the bottom.
“It did not contact down instantly, and so it misplaced a whole lot of vital actual property by simply persevering with to drift over the runway. It was actually nonetheless flying,” Schiavo mentioned.
She famous the Miami airport shouldn’t be geared up with arresting methods that the FAA says have been put in at greater than 120 airports nationwide to securely cease planes that do go previous the top of a runway. These beds of light-weight, crushable materials on the finish of a runway have been credited by the FAA with serving to save no less than 497 lives aboard planes that overran runways.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
