Five dead after an Amazon cargo plane veers off MIA runway and smashes into cars
An Amazon cargo plane skidded off the end of the runway at Miami International Airport Sunday afternoon, careening through a wire fence and smashing into several cars on a nearby road, killing five people, injuring five more and causing a full ground stop that halted all flights for hours.
Two of MIA’s four runways opened about three hours after the crash Sunday, and that remained the status as of Monday morning.
“Because of aircraft and flight crews not arriving at MIA due to the cancellations yesterday, we will continue to see impacts to operations throughout the day,” Miami International Airport posted to its X account Monday morning. “Passengers with flights scheduled today should check directly with their airline for flight status updates before heading to the airport.”
The Federal Aviation Administration maintained an advisory for MIA on Monday, saying it was experiencing a ground delay. The average delay was two hours and 31 minutes, as of about 10 a.m. Monday, it said.
The impact of Sunday’s crash continued to be felt. At MIA, 141 flights were delayed, including 42 departures and 99 arrivals. Meanwhile, it had 65 cancellations, affecting 28 departures and 37 arrivals as of 10 a.m. Monday, according to Flight Aware.
READ MORE: Flights delayed after plane crash at Miami International Airport. How to check yours
Cargo transportation company 21 Air, based out of Miami and Greensboro, North Carolina, operated the plane for Amazon. By the end of Sunday, 21 Air had replaced its website with a statement from CEO Keith Winters:
“We are devastated by the accident involving one of our aircraft in Miami today.
Our deepest condolences are with the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives. Our immediate priorities are supporting those affected, assisting the authorities, and ensuring that accurate information is communicated as it becomes available.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said flight 7598 from 21 Air, a Boeing 767-300 arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, overran runway No. 30 after landing at MIA around 2 p.m.
After crossing Northwest 67th Avenue, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said, the plane “struck multiple vehicles.” Photographs from the scene show crunched cars snarled in chunks of the wire fence that used to separate the airport from the road.
Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz confirmed Sunday evening in a press briefing with other officials that the crash killed five people. Five others were sent to the hospital, three of whom were in critical condition, said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Raied “Ray” Jadallah. Several of the casualties were on the ground.
The plane crashed into “a couple” of vehicles, trapping people inside, Jadallah said. One of the victims was trapped underneath a car and had to be extracted by technical rescue personnel, the department said in a statement.
It was a “complex” search and rescue, extraction and fire, the chief said, emphasizing that it was a “very complex situation.” There was an active fuel leak, which was being addressed as officials briefed reporters around 6 p.m.
The pilot and co-pilot were also trapped in the plane, Jadallah said, although it was not clear how long — or the extent of crew members’ injuries.
The resulting fire from the crash sent large puffs of black smoke into the air. A firefighter was heard on the radio telling his colleagues, “The plane is on fire. The plane is on fire. Put your game faces on, guys.”
Emergency radio dispatch traffic painted a chaotic scene facing the fire rescue workers among the 60 MDFR responding units.
Firefighters are heard scrambling to get hoses close enough to the plane to spray water to suppress the flames. The aircraft’s left engine was also still running as firefighters battled the fire, making it dangerous for them to enter the plane to check for patients inside.
Firefighters are also heard saying that the pilots told them they could not turn the engine off because they would need to “energize” the aircraft, so firefighters had to flood the engine with water from their hoses to disable it.
Firefighters and paramedics working the road, meanwhile, were busy extricating seriously injured people from vehicles hit by the plane.
The crash froze all travel at MIA for hours on Sunday afternoon.
As of about 4:45 p.m., according to Flight Aware, MIA had 275 delays — 156 departures and 119 arrivals. The airport also had 82 canceled flights, slightly more departures than arrivals. Flights had begun resuming at some runways by 5 p.m.
Shortly after 5 p.m., Gaurav Sharma, 36, looked at the departures board at MIA for an update on his scrambled plans. His original British Airways flight to London scheduled for 5 p.m. was listed as canceled. Sharma, in Miami on business from his home in New Delhi, was already rebooked on another flight leaving for London at 7:40 p.m. But first, that jet needed to get to Miami — and Sharma’s flight-tracking app showed its arrival time getting pushed back again and again. “I’m checking to see if that plane will get here,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
Shortly after 5 p.m., there were hints of MIA getting flights underway again. A few flights were listed as departed. Greg Chin, an MIA spokesman, confirmed the airport was starting to resume flight operations.
“Two of MIA’s four runways are now open,” Chin said.
The cause of the crash will be determined by the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board, Cordero-Stutz said. The FAA will also investigate, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X.
The sheriff’s office will also investigate the five fatalities, Cordero-Stutz said. Her agency also has dedicated a hotline for family members of those who may have been killed or injured at 305-471-2400.
There “is no apparent threat to public safety,” she said.
Crews were on scene within 30 seconds of getting the call, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said. There were 60 fire apparatus with around 200 crew members involved in the operation.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said her “heart is with all the families who were affected.”
Possible causes
Pablo Rojas is an aviation attorney with the Coral Gables law firm Podhurst Orseck, which has a history of representing plane crash victims back to the Eastern Airlines Dec. 29, 1972, crash that killed 101 of the 176 people on board.
Knowing with certainly what happened Sunday is impossible to know so soon after the crash, Rojas said, but there are a number of possibilities that stand out to him. Chiefly, he said, the condition of the plane’s landing gear when it came to a rest.
“You can see it stops in this parking lot area with the landing gear collapsed,” Rojas told the Miami Herald. “The nose is kind of dipping down. We don’t know if that’s something that happened late in the accident sequence or early enough to have caused the accident sequence.”
“You can imagine the incident being caused by something else and then the landing gear collapsing, but certainly if there was an issue with the landing gear early in the accident sequence, that’s going to be the first clue for investigators,” he said.
The stormy weather South Florida has been experiencing almost daily this week is also something that investigators will likely be looking at, Rojas said.
“A landing at an international airport is complex. The pilot needs to be communicating with air traffic control. Air traffic control needs to be minding the weather, and communicating that with the pilot. We know we’ve had rain in Miami recently. Air traffic control needs to help the pilot understand the condition of the runway,” Rojas said.
“Planes can land in nasty weather, but obviously, if the runway is slick that can sometimes cause air traffic control to pause or stop landings for a period of time,” he said.
Miami Herald Staff Writer Vinod Sreeharsha contributed to this story.
This story was originally published September 6, 2026 at 3:05 PM with the headline "Five dead after an Amazon cargo plane veers off MIA runway and smashes into cars."
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the number of people who died on the Dec. 29, 1972, Eastern Airlines crash. Seventy-five of the 176 people on board survived.
