NTSB: Amazon cargo jet ran 1,300 feet past a Miami runway and killed five on the ground

The Amazon Prime Air Boeing 767 that overran Runway 30 at Miami International Airport on Sunday travelled about 1,300 feet past the paved surface, struck airport navigation gear, tore through a contract cleaning van and then hit a Toyota on a public road outside the fence. National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy gave that sequence on Monday. All five people killed were on the ground. The two pilots walked away.

The aircraft was a 32-year-old Boeing 767-33A flying as 21 Air Flight 7598 for Amazon. It was the jet’s third sector of the day. It had left Amazon’s Cincinnati hub for Miami, continued to San Juan and was returning to Miami when it landed at 1:53 p.m. Eastern time. Flightradar24 tracks showed the aircraft high on the approach to the 9,000-foot runway, then dropping back toward the glide path. Homendy did not assign a cause.

The first vehicle was a white Ford Econoline van owned by Professional Ocean Service Corp., a contractor that cleans aircraft cabins. Seven people were inside. Five of them died. The jet then broke the perimeter fence and struck a Toyota Corolla Cross on a warehouse-access road. Homendy described the scene as “utter devastation” with debris across the overrun area. Five other people were injured. Three were in critical condition on Sunday night.

Investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder on Monday and sent both to NTSB headquarters that night. Homendy said her team of 32 had not yet been given full access to the wreckage because recovery of the dead came first. The pilots had not been interviewed by Monday afternoon. She said a probable cause would wait until the inquiry ends, a process that often takes a year or longer.

Part of the early work will look at the ground beyond the runway threshold. Some U.S. airports install Engineered Material Arresting Systems, a bed of crushable concrete designed to slow an aircraft that cannot stop on pavement. Homendy said investigators will examine whether the absence of that material at the end of Runway 30 is relevant. The technology has been credited with stopping passenger jets in other overruns. Miami’s layout, with a service road and a public road close to the airfield boundary, is now part of the file.

21 Air is a Miami-based cargo operator and one of nine vendors flying for Amazon Air, which runs more than 250 daily sectors. The company is not Amazon. The livery on the tail is Amazon’s. That split will shape liability questions for families, insurers and the Federal Aviation Administration, which certificates the carrier, not the retailer. Homendy said the NTSB will look at the Amazon-21 Air operating arrangement as well as the landing itself.

Two of the airport’s runways stayed closed while fuel and wreckage were cleared. Labor Day weekend traffic was already heavy. Homendy’s briefing did not give a reopening date. Local officials confirmed that the people in the van were a cleaning crew between aircraft, not passengers and not Amazon warehouse staff.

The facts that are firm are few and specific. Time of impact: 1:53 p.m. Distance past pavement: 1,300 feet. Vehicles: a seven-occupant Ford van inside the fence and a Toyota outside it. Recorders: recovered. Crew: two, alive, not yet interviewed. Dead: five, all on the ground. Those numbers are the starting grid for an investigation that will have to decide whether the landing was too long, too fast, too high, or some mix of the three, and whether the ground beyond the stripes was ever going to stop a 767 that arrived that way.

Amazon has not published a detailed operational statement beyond cooperation with the inquiry. Boeing is a party to the investigation as the manufacturer. 21 Air’s certificate and training records will be requested as a matter of course. Families of the van crew are still in the identification process. Homendy said that work outranks access to the cockpit.

The next public step is the recorder readout and the crew interviews. Until those exist, the only verified account is the one Homendy read at the airport on Monday: a cargo jet on its third flight of the day left the runway, hit the tools that mark the field, hit the people who clean the cabins, and did not stop until it was on the public side of the fence.