Five Dead After Amazon Plane Overran Runway at Miami Airport
An Amazon cargo plane barreled off a runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday, killing at least five people and injuring five others as it struck vehicles and was engulfed in flames, authorities said.
The aircraft overran the runway around 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and plowed across a road used by warehouse workers and other businesses that surround the airport. Five people were killed, three critically injured and two others hospitalized with less severe injuries, Miami-Dade County officials told a news conference.
The pilots were not believed to be seriously injured. One can be seen jumping from the plane after the crash, cellphone video shows, NBC 6 reported on social media.
The crash, which sent thick black smoke billowing into the sky, initially trapped the pilot and copilot in the cockpit and some occupants in cars, said Miami-Dade Rescue Fire Chief Ray Jadallah. The agency said crews also had to extricate a person who was trapped under a vehicle.
The crash halted flights at the busy travel hub for much of the afternoon. Some 200 emergency personnel responded, finding the plane with heavy flames and smoke from a complex engine compartment fire, the department said. Firefighters used foam from specialized airport firefighting units to extinguish the fire, and crews were still dealing with a fuel leak on the plane hours later.
The jet hit a white Ford Econoline van after it went off the runway, leaving it “torn apart,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said. The van had been transporting a cleaning crew inside the airport perimeter and had seven people inside, she said. The aircraft then hit a small Toyota SUV that was on a road just outside the airport fence. All the victims were from those two vehicles, she said.
The flight, operating for Amazon.com Inc., was operated by 21 Air LLC as a sub-contractor. Before it hit the cars, it also struck navigational equipment at the airport.
Homendy said the agency didn’t have access to the aircraft itself yet because recovery operations were still ongoing. The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have been recovered and were being flown to NTSB headquarters Monday night for download. NTSB has 32 people investigating the accident, she said. The investigators started arriving Sunday evening and will be on scene for at least a week.
Two runways remained closed as recovery work continued.
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The Prime Air plane came to rest beside a roadway near two semitrucks, images showed. The aircraft appeared to be resting on its belly and was largely intact despite the fire.
The cause had yet to be determined, and it was not clear if weather had played a role. Thunderstorms and wind gusts up to 30 mph were recorded in the area at the time, according to the National Weather Service.
The flight had been operated by 21 Air, a cargo carrier based in North Carolina. The 32-year-old Boeing 767 was originally built to carry passengers and flew for several airlines for more than two decades before being converted to a cargo plane in 2015, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
More than 160 flights were canceled and nearly 325 delayed by late Sunday, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions. Officials from Orlando International Airport, more than 200 miles north of Miami, said some flights were diverted there.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team to Miami led by Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy to investigate.
Amazon said in a statement that it would cooperate with any investigation.
“We’re heartbroken to learn that five people lost their lives in today’s incident at Miami International Airport,” the company said. “Our deepest sympathies go out to the families, loved ones, and all those affected by this devastating loss.”
Last year, a UPS plane crashed after losing its engine while accelerating down the runway at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport. The crash killed all three pilots and 12 people on the ground. Twenty-three more were injured. In May of this year, a United 767 struck a light pole that hit vehicles on a highway as the plane came in too low on landing.
Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said that a 767 cargo aircraft would typically be staffed only by a pilot and copilot on domestic flights. A third pilot would be added for an international flight, and a long-haul international flight would require a fourth pilot.
Arroyo, a retired longtime United Airlines pilot, said he wants to know whether the Amazon plane landed in the touchdown zone of the runway, and if it was beyond that area why it didn’t simply abort that landing and go around to line up for another attempt. Typically, the landing zone is within the first 3,000 feet (914 meters) of a runway.
“Did the aircraft land within the required touchdown zone?” he asked. “If it did, what happened?”
Mary Schiavo, who is a pilot and former inspector general of the Transportation Department, said that video posted online of the landing shows the Amazon plane floating above the runway for an extended period without flaring the nose upward to force the main landing gear onto the ground.
“It didn’t touch down right away, and so it lost a lot of critical real estate by just continuing to float over the runway. It was literally still flying,” Schiavo said.
She noted the Miami airport is not equipped with arresting systems that the FAA says have been installed at more than 120 airports nationwide to safely stop planes that do go past the end of a runway. Those beds of lightweight, crushable material at the end of a runway have been credited by the FAA with helping save at least 497 lives aboard planes that overran runways.
Photo: The scene Sunday at Miami International. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Related: South Florida Airport Plagued With Crashes
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Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Tim Reynolds in Miami, Rio Yamat in Las Vegas and Wufei Yu in Phoenix contributed.