Why did a jet crash-land in Miami? Federal investigators are searching for answers

Federal investigators on Wednesday arrived at Miami International Airport to look into what caused a passenger jet to make a crash-landing the evening before.

A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency that investigates transportation accidents including plane crashes, told the Miami Herald the agency will release a preliminary report on the crash-landing of RED Air Flight 203 in the coming days.

A team of investigators will be sifting through the wreckage and combing through the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.

The plane made a crash landing after a landing gear malfunction, skidding on the runway before coming to a stop in a grassy area and bursting into flames. Three passengers were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, but everyone on board survived the harrowing incident.

The plane remained in the runway area Wednesday as investigators conducted their initial review.

Two of the airport’s four runways are expected to remain closed until that initial assessment is complete, at which point the plane will be moved and the investigation will continue. That may cause some flights to be delayed Wednesday and into Thursday.

In a statement, RED Air said the plane “had technical difficulties after landing” but did not provide additional details.

“At RED Air we express our absolute solidarity with the passengers and crew of the aircraft,” the airline’s statement said.

Early reports indicated there were 126 people on board, but a company spokesperson told the Miami Herald there were 126 adult passengers, four infants and 10 crew members comprising a total of 140. Miami International Airport confirmed those numbers Wednesday.

RED Air is a low-fare airline based in the Dominican Republic that launched in November 2021 and only flies between its home base in Santo Domingo and Miami International Airport.

One of the airline’s two flights scheduled to arrive in Miami on Wednesday was canceled, according to online flight information. Another originally set to depart from Santo Domingo at 8 a.m. was later delayed to 2 p.m.

Devoun Cetoute and Omar Rodriguez Ortiz contributed to this report.

This story was originally published June 22, 2022 at 12:02 PM.

Aaron Leibowitz

Miami Herald

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Aaron Leibowitz covers the city of Miami Beach for the Miami Herald, where he has worked as a local government reporter since 2019. He was part of a team that won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside. He is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School’s Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism.

Michelle Marchante

Miami Herald

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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