MIAMI — The five people killed when an Amazon cargo jet ran off a runway at Miami International Airport were all inside a van carrying seven people from a cleaning company and an SUV hit outside of airport property, National Transportation Safety Board Chairperson Jennifer Homendy said Monday.
Homendy called the scene of Sunday’s crash “utter devastation.” She didn’t detail how many people were in the SUV or where the dead were located.
Homendy walked the route the Boeing 767 followed, noting tire marks from the pavement into the grass, the destroyed van carrying the cleaning crew, torn fencing, navigational equipment, and the crushed SUV outside airport property.
The debris included vehicle air bags, equipment from the vehicles, the airplane, and the airport, and “fencing everywhere,” Homendy said.
“It’s pretty extensive. Hard to see and I’m sure it must have been very difficult for the responders as well,” Homendy said.
The airline, all told, traveled about 1,300 feet past the paved surface. Debris was everywhere, she said.
“I would describe it in one word as devastating, utter devastation,” Homendy said.
The van with seven people inside was “torn apart. It certainly must have been devastating,” she said. The van was owned by Professional Ocean Service Corp., an airline cleaning contractor.
Homendy said the NTSB would issue more information on Tuesday, including possibly information on speed that is confirmed by the flight data recorder.
Federal investigators examining cause
Federal investigators examining the crash spent Monday determining whether the plane touched down too late to stop safely.
Video of Sunday’s landing appears to show the Boeing 767 remaining airborne well down the runway before touching down. Aviation experts said investigators will seek to determine exactly where the plane landed, whether it was beyond the normal touchdown zone, and why the pilots did not abandon the landing.
Investigators will also examine the plane’s speed and braking, weather and wind conditions, the aircraft’s mechanical condition, and other factors that could have contributed to the deadly overrun.
The aircraft on Sunday flew from Cincinnati to Miami and then to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was returning to Miami when it overran the runway around 2 p.m. and plowed across a road used by warehouse workers and other businesses that surround the airport.
Aside from the five who died, three people were critically injured and two others were hospitalized with less severe injuries, officials said.
The crash, which sent thick black smoke billowing into the sky, trapped the pilot and copilot in the cockpit and some occupants in cars, said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Ray Jadallah. The agency said crews also had to extricate a person who was trapped under a vehicle.
The typical landing zone for a plane is within the first 3,000 feet of a runway, experts said. If the cargo jet was beyond that area, it should have aborted the landing and gone around for another try, aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said.
Mary Schiavo, who is a pilot and former Inspector General of the Transportation Department, said video posted online shows the Amazon plane floating above the runway for an extended period without flaring the nose upward to force the main landing gear onto the ground.
It wasn’t raining at the time, but dark storm clouds loomed and strong winds were reported. Schiavo said that if the plane had a tail wind, that could have contributed to it floating further down the runway.
“A tail wind would certainly add to your troubles if you’ve already given up a good chunk of the runway by not touching down and landing right away,” Schiavo said.
Airport appears compliant without updated system
The Miami airport is not equipped with arresting systems that the FAA says have been installed at more than 120 airports nationwide to safely stop planes that do go past the end of a runway. Those beds of lightweight, crushable material at the end of a runway have been credited by the FAA with helping save at least 497 lives aboard planes that overran runways.
Miami’s airport appears to be in compliance and wasn’t required to have an arresting system because it has a 1,000-foot safety buffer at the end of its runways, said Mike O’Donnell, the FAA’s former director of airport safety and accident investigations.
The requirement was prompted by American Airlines Flight 1420 overrunning a runway at Little Rock National Airport in Arkansas in 1999, killing nine.
The Prime Air plane came to rest beside a roadway near two semitrucks, images showed. The aircraft appeared to be resting on its belly and was largely intact despite the fire.
The flight had been operated by 21 Air, a cargo carrier based in North Carolina. The 32-year-old Boeing 767 was originally built to carry passengers and flew for several airlines for more than two decades before being converted to a cargo plane in 2015, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
Schiavo said the NTSB will also closely examine the maintenance history of this plane — particularly since it has a history of foreign ownership, including by a Russian company.
The crash halted flights at the busy travel hub for much of Sunday afternoon and continued to hamper air travel into Monday.
Miami International Airport said that two of its four runways remained closed Monday and that operations were to be affected throughout the day because of aircraft and flight crews not arriving there due to Sunday’s cancellations after the crash.
An airport spokesperson said there were 160 cancellations and more than 300 delayed flights Sunday, plus another 69 canceled flights Monday through mid-afternoon. Flight tracking sites were reporting widespread delays at the airport.
Amazon said in a statement that it would cooperate with any investigation.
“We’re heartbroken to learn that five people lost their lives in today’s incident at Miami International Airport,” the company said. “Our deepest sympathies go out to the families, loved ones, and all those affected by this devastating loss.”
Last year, a UPS plane crashed after losing its engine while accelerating down the runway at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport. The crash killed all three pilots and 12 people on the ground. Twenty-three more were injured.
