‘Going to die.’ Passengers recall flight’s fiery crash at Miami International Airport

Passengers are telling stories of the terrifying moments of their flight’s crash landing at Miami International Airport.

“People were very frightened,” passenger Mauricio Davis, of Weston, told the Miami Herald — recalling how people began screaming and panicking when they saw the fire on Tuesday evening. Davis was returning from Venezuela and caught the connecting flight in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

“People were grabbing the seats to keep from spinning around,” he said.

The RED Air jetliner crash-landed at Miami International Airport after a landing gear malfunction. The plane skidded along the runway before coming to a stop, with black plumes of smoke filling the air.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board are at the airport Wednesday to look into the crash-landing.

READ MORE: How the RED Air crash-landing is affecting the Miami airport. Is your flight delayed?

“I thought I was going to die,” passenger Paola Garcia told reporters at the airport, later telling WSVN she thought the plane was going to explode.

Passengers aboard RED Air Flight 203 told Local10 and Miami Herald news partner CBS4 that the plane shook, its windows broke and one of the wings caught fire.

“I feel very scared,” 92-year-old grandmother Violeta Torres told Univision 23 in Spanish. She said she fell while escaping. Her knee was wrapped in bandages.

There were 140 people aboard the RED Air flight, consisting of 126 adult passengers, four infants and 10 crew members.

Everyone survived. Three people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

“What happened here is a miracle,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters at the airport, noting that emergency crews were at the plane in a minute and a half.

READ MORE: What is RED Air? Things to know about new Dominican airline that crash-landed in Miami

Miami Herald staff writers Grethel Aguila and Aaron Leibowitz contributed to this report.

This story was originally published June 22, 2022 at 8:30 AM.

Michelle Marchante

Miami Herald

305-376-2708

Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health’s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald’s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow.  Support my work with a digital subscription