NTSB: Amazon cargo jet ran 1,300 feet past a Miami runway and hit two vehicles

The National Transportation Safety Board said on 7 September that an Amazon cargo jet overran Runway 30 at Miami International Airport by about 1,300 feet, hit two vehicles and came to rest in a field of wreckage that Chair Jennifer Homendy called utter devastation.

Prime Air Flight 7598 was a Boeing 767-300 freighter operated for Amazon by 21 Air LLC. It landed at about 1.53 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, 6 September, after a flight from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The aircraft had already flown Cincinnati to Miami and Miami to San Juan the same day. Two people were in the cockpit.

Five people died. Five were injured, three of them critically on Sunday evening. Homendy said all of the dead were in the two vehicles the jet struck, not in the aircraft. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava had given the same death and injury counts on Sunday night. Fire Chief Raied Jadallah said more than 200 firefighters answered the call and that crews had to cut people out of crushed vehicles.

The path off the runway

Homendy's Monday briefing filled in the sequence. The jet left the usable pavement, hit navigational aids and airport equipment, then struck a white Ford Econoline van. One NTSB account gave the van's year as 2012. Another briefing referred to a 2021 Ford Econoline. Both accounts agreed on the owner: Professional Ocean Service Corp., a contract cleaning company that works for airlines at the airport. Seven people were inside the van.

The aircraft then broke through a perimeter fence and hit a passenger vehicle on a public road outside the airport boundary. Homendy identified that vehicle as a Toyota Corolla Cross. The jet ended about 1,300 feet beyond the paved runway. FlightRadar24 data cited by the BBC showed the aircraft still moving at 112 knots, about 207 kilometres an hour, as it left the usable runway.

Flightradar24 also showed an unstable last segment. The jet rose above the normal approach path to Runway 30, then dropped back toward the glideslope. The runway itself is more than 9,000 feet long. Homendy did not give a cause. She said the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder had been recovered.

Who flew the aircraft

21 Air is a North Carolina cargo carrier with an operations centre in Miami. It is one of nine flight vendors in the Amazon Air network, which runs more than 250 flights a day. The 767-300 involved is 32 years old. It flew passengers for various airlines from 1994 to 2015 before conversion to a freighter. Amazon's smile mark was on the tail.

Amazon Air is not itself an airline in the regulatory sense for this flight. The certificate holder is 21 Air. That split matters for the investigation. The NTSB will look at the crew, the aircraft, the approach, the runway condition, the weather and the operator's procedures. Amazon's role as the customer will sit in a different part of the file.

The airport after the crash

Miami International is the busiest US airport for international freight and the third busiest for freight overall. Two runways were kept closed on Monday while investigators worked and while fuel from the wreck was still a hazard. FlightAware counted at least 153 delayed flights and 65 cancellations by noon on Monday. The airport had halted movements right after the accident and resumed some flying on Sunday evening, then spent Labor Day weekend with reduced capacity.

Jadallah said on Sunday that the pilot and copilot were trapped in the aircraft and had to be freed. Their condition was not clearly stated in the Monday NTSB briefing. The three people listed as critical on Sunday had not been publicly identified by Monday afternoon. Officials also declined to name the dead.

A student pilot, Rohan Ellis, told local reporters that the vehicles the jet hit were mangled. That matches Homendy's description of the ground path. The open questions are why a 767 on a runway longer than 9,000 feet did not stop, whether the approach became unstable late, and how a contractors' van with seven people in it came to be in the overrun area.

Those answers will come from the recorders, the wreckage and the interviews. The fact on Monday was simpler. A cargo jet on its third sector of the day left the pavement, crossed the airport edge and killed five people who were not flying it.