Five people were killed and five others injured on Sunday (September 6) after an Amazon cargo plane overran the runway at Miami International Airport, Florida, hitting several vehicles and catching fire, local authorities said.
“We now know that five people lost their lives and five others were injured,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said during a press conference at the airport, a little less than three hours after the accident, without specifying the identity of the victims. Of the injured, three are in “critical condition” and the other two were transported to a local hospital, Miami-Dade Fire Chief Ray Jadallah said.
The accident occurred in the early afternoon, just before 2 p.m. local time. The American aviation regulator (FAA) indicated that the damaged cargo plane was Prime Air flight 7598, a Boeing 767-300 from Puerto Rico, and announced that it was opening an investigation.
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“Prime Air flight 7598 left the end of the runway at Miami International Airport (…) at approximately 2:00 p.m., leaving the aircraft stopped northwest of the airport,” the Florida airport reported on its X account. “It came to rest in a field adjacent to the airport,” Daniella Levine Cava told the press.
The head of the local fire department confirmed that the device had struck several vehicles, leading his teams to carry out “a complex extrication operation” to rescue “several victims who were trapped inside”.
The firefighters also had to remove the pilot and co-pilot, trapped in the cockpit, while the plane’s engines were “on fire”, he explained.
He finally specified that his teams were working to control a kerosene leak at the rear of the aircraft.
Videos of the accident posted on social media show thick smoke and flames rising from a plane bearing Prime Air lettering in light blue, which appears to have crossed a road before stopping its course. Several trucks are nearby.
A fire extinguished
“Upon their arrival, the teams found a plane which had caught fire following this accident, with large flames and smoke,” the firefighters initially described on the social network X, specifying that they had mobilized more than sixty of their members.
After interrupting its traffic for a while, Miami airport indicated on X that it had reopened a first runway around 5 p.m. local, then a second around 6 p.m. local.
In images shot by Agence France-Presse (AFP) around 4 p.m., the fire appears to have been extinguished. Police cars and ambulances with flashing lights are visible in the perimeter.
Questioned by AFP, Amazon confirmed the accident which occurred during landing and said it was “doing everything possible to help those affected”, according to its spokesperson Kelly Nantel. “The situation is evolving very quickly and we are still gathering information.”
The American Transportation Safety Agency (NTSB) announced in a press release that it was sending investigators to the site and plans to organize a press conference on Monday in Miami.
In November 2025, the crash of a cargo plane from the American carrier UPS on takeoff from Louisville airport, in Kentucky, in the east-central United States, after one of its engines had separated, caused fifteen deaths, twelve on the ground and three crew members.
Last March in New York, a collision between a plane operating on behalf of Air Canada and a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport cost the lives of the plane’s two pilots and left several dozen injured.
With AFP
