Five Dead After Amazon Cargo Plane Barrels Off Miami Runway Into Vehicles

A Catastrophic Overrun on a Sunday Afternoon

At least five people are dead after an Amazon cargo aircraft overran the runway during a landing at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, striking multiple vehicles and sending a thick black plume of smoke into the air as it caught fire. The flight was arriving from Puerto Rico with two crew members onboard, and it was the third trip for the plane that day, having gone from Cincinnati to Miami to San Juan before heading back to Miami.

The accident occurred at 1:53 p.m. ET when the plane — Amazon Air Flight 7598, a Boeing 767-300 operated by 21 Air LLC, based in Miami — overran Runway 30. It was traveling at nearly 130 miles per hour when it left the usable portion of the runway. The plane slid 1,300 feet past the pavement before crashing through a perimeter fence, crossing Northwest 67th Avenue, and crushing vehicles. It then came to a stop and burst into flames.

Victims on the Ground, Chaos at the Airport

The people who died when the Amazon cargo plane went off the runway were all passengers of vehicles on the ground, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. At a news conference on Monday, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said the plane hit both a van with seven people inside and an SUV when it overran the runway — the van was inside the airport perimeter and the SUV was outside. The van was owned by Professional Ocean Service Corporation, a company that cleans aircraft.

Three victims are in critical condition and were taken to a trauma center, while two others were taken to a local hospital. Several victims were trapped in the vehicles that were hit by the plane and had to be extricated. The crash led to a roughly three-hour ground stop and forced officials to close all four runways at the South Florida airport. A review of air traffic control audio shows the pilots did not declare an emergency before the landing.

A Missing Safety System Raises Hard Questions

The runways at Miami International are not equipped with Arrestor Beds, also known as an Engineered Material Arresting System (EMAS) — a pad of crushable material placed at the end of the runway to stop an aircraft from overrunning. These systems are designed to slow and stop an aircraft before it exits the end of the runway, and are made of lightweight, crushable materials that force a plane to slow down, somewhat akin to sinking in mud. Those beds of crushable material have been credited by the FAA with helping save at least 497 lives aboard planes that overran runways.

Miami International Airport clarified that its runway maintains the full 1,000-foot Runway Safety Area mandated by the FAA, noting that EMAS "are generally used at airports where space constraints prevent a full safety area from being provided" and that "no U.S. airport has EMAS at a runway end that also maintains the full, unobstructed 1,000-foot safety area." Still, experts aren't satisfied. Aviation analyst Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the Department of Transportation, said: "An airport this surrounded by population, they need an arrestor bed system at the end of these runways to stop this from happening again."

EMAS is designed to accept and slow an aircraft arriving at around 80 miles per hour — and this aircraft was arriving at about 130 miles per hour, making it unclear what the system might have done, though it certainly would have slowed it further. NTSB Chairwoman Homendy confirmed that investigators are examining the absence of an EMAS system at the crash site.

Investigation Underway, Questions Linger

A team of 32 people is currently on site and will be documenting the scene and collecting "perishable evidence" over the week. 21 Air CEO Keith Winters said the crash has left the company "devastated" and that it is cooperating with federal investigators. The NTSB and FAA have drawn no conclusions about the cause of the overrun, stressing that the investigation is in its early stages.

As federal investigators piece together what went wrong on September 6, the crash has ignited a broader debate about runway safety standards at one of the nation's busiest airports. Experts note that for an airport "as congested as Miami — with population all around it — buildings, freeways, et cetera," the absence of any runway overrun protection is difficult to justify. Whether Sunday's tragedy ultimately forces a rethinking of FAA policy on EMAS requirements — not just in Miami, but at airports nationwide — may be the most consequential question to emerge from