NTSB: Amazon cargo jet hit a seven-person van after leaving Miami's runway

The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board said on 7 September that the Amazon cargo jet that overran Miami International Airport the previous afternoon struck a white Ford E-Series van with seven people inside and then a Toyota Corolla Cross on Northwest 67th Avenue. All five people who died were in those two vehicles, Jennifer Homendy told reporters. Five others were injured. Three of the injured were listed as critical on Sunday night.

The aircraft was 21 Air Flight 7598, a 32-year-old Boeing 767-300 flying for Amazon Air from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It touched the airport's Runway 30 shortly before 2 p.m. Eastern Time and did not stop on the paved surface. Homendy said the jet travelled about 1,300 feet beyond the pavement, hit navigational equipment, crossed the road that serves warehouse and cleaning traffic, and came to rest in a lot used by Tesla robotaxis. Investigators recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.

The van belonged to Professional Ocean Service Corporation, a contractor that cleans airport facilities. Homendy described the crash site as devastating, with debris spread across the road and the lot. Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said more than 60 rescue units and about 200 personnel reached the scene within seconds. Fire crews spent the afternoon on a fuel leak from the freighter.

Flightradar24 data showed an unstable approach. The jet rose above the normal glideslope, then dropped back toward the runway. As it left the usable pavement it was still doing 112 knots, about 207 kilometres an hour. There were light thunderstorms and gusting winds over Miami at the time. Whether the crew landed long, whether the brakes or spoilers failed, and whether weather was a factor are the questions the NTSB listed for the inquiry.

21 Air, based in North Carolina with an operations centre in Miami, is one of nine carriers that fly for Amazon Air. The 767 began life as a passenger jet in 1994 and was converted to freight in 2015. Keith Winters, the airline's chief executive, said the company was devastated. Amazon's media director, Kelly Nantel, offered condolences and noted that 21 Air operated the aircraft.

The airport halted movements after the overrun, then restarted flights the same evening. By noon on Monday FlightAware counted 153 delays and 65 cancellations. Miami is the busiest U.S. airport for international freight and a main node for Amazon's Caribbean and Latin American lift. Labor Day traffic made the disruption sharper.

Officials have not named the dead. Homendy said the first task was recovering victims, then reconstructing the landing. Investigators will look at the crew's two earlier sectors that day, the aircraft's maintenance file, and the layout of the road beyond Runway 30. A public road sitting past the end of a freight runway is now part of the safety file, not only the landing itself.

The useful fact from Monday's briefing is the passenger count inside the van. Seven people were in a contractor vehicle on a service road when a 767 that should have stopped on 9,000 feet of concrete arrived among them. The recorders will say what the pilots saw. The road layout will say what the airport allowed to sit past the threshold.