An Amazon Air cargo plane overran the runway at Miami International Airport Sunday afternoon, plowing through a perimeter fence and striking two vehicles — killing all five workers inside a cleaning crew van and injuring five others in what the National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman described Monday as "utter devastation."
Flight 7598, a Boeing 767-300 freighter operated by 21 Air LLC on behalf of Amazon and flying from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, touched down hard and fast midway down the runway at approximately 1:53 p.m. and failed to stop before the runway's end. The plane shredded through airport safety equipment, crossed a perimeter road, and struck a van belonging to Professional Ocean Service Corp. — a contract cleaning company that services aircraft at the airport — and an SUV. The van was inside the airport perimeter; the SUV was outside it. All five occupants of the van were killed. They were identified Tuesday as Rolando Aleman Leon, 55; Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53; Julio C. Pineda, 75; Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53; and Javierk Reyes Quevedo, 47. Three of the five injured remain hospitalized, two in critical condition. The plane's two pilots were treated and released. The aircraft caught fire after impact, sending a thick black plume of smoke visible across Miami visible from miles away.
"I would describe it in one word as devastating — utter devastation. Tire marks that plowed through grass. A torn-apart van." — NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy, Monday press conference
The NTSB has deployed a 32-person investigation team to Miami, and investigators are examining three broad categories: operations and human performance — including whether the crew recognized the developing situation and applied maximum reverse thrust and braking — mechanical factors including the aircraft's systems and brake condition, and environmental variables including the presence of thunderstorms and shifting winds in the Miami area at the time of the crash. The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have both been recovered. Preliminary data from Flightradar24 shows the aircraft was traveling at approximately 130 miles per hour when it left the usable portion of the runway — a speed well above what is typical for a plane at that stage of a landing roll. The NTSB said it would not determine probable cause on scene, and the full investigation could take a year or more.
The crash immediately raised scrutiny of Miami International Airport's runway safety infrastructure. The runway where the crash occurred lacks an Engineered Material Arresting System — concrete pads designed to crush under the weight of an aircraft and stop a plane that has overrun the runway. Aviation safety experts noted that EMAS installations have stopped multiple potential disasters at airports that have them, and the absence of such a system at the end of a runway at one of America's busiest international airports will likely become a central focus of the NTSB's safety recommendations.
Miami International Airport is the nation's busiest airport for international freight and its second busiest for international passengers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued a full ground stop following the crash, which has reduced the airport to operating on two of its normal four runways. 21 Air LLC is the third-party cargo carrier that was operating the aircraft under contract for Amazon's Prime Air logistics network. Amazon has not announced changes to its contracted cargo operations and said it is cooperating fully with investigators.
Five people went to work on a Sunday afternoon to clean aircraft at one of America's busiest airports and never came home — killed not by anything they did or failed to do, but because a 130-mile-per-hour cargo plane crossed the boundary between the airfield and where they were doing their job. The NTSB will ultimately determine what caused Flight 7598 to overshoot its runway. Congress and the FAA will then face the question of what safety systems should have been in place to make sure that even if a plane does overshoot, the catastrophic outcome Miami saw on Sunday is never repeated.