Amazon cargo jet overshoots runway at Miami International Airport, killing five

An Amazon-branded cargo jet overran the runway while landing at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, crossing beyond the airfield boundary and striking multiple vehicles on an adjacent road before catching fire. Five people were killed and five others injured, three of them critically, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said.

The aircraft, Prime Air Flight 7598, was a Boeing 767-300 freighter operated by the North Carolina-based carrier 21 Air under contract to Amazon. It had departed Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and came down at Miami International at approximately 2 p.m. ET, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration, which confirmed the flight number and time. The crash occurred on one of the busiest travel days of the Labor Day holiday weekend, compounding the disruption for thousands of passengers already moving through South Florida's airports.

A runway crossing on a holiday weekend

The 32-year-old widebody, converted to a freighter configuration in 2015, overran the runway and continued past the airport's boundary near NW 42nd Avenue, colliding with vehicles on the road and igniting a fire that required an extensive emergency response. Miami International Airport said in a statement that it issued a full ground stop and closed all runways and taxiways for roughly three hours as crews responded; two of the airport's four runways had reopened by Sunday evening, though delays continued to cascade through the night on one of the year's busiest travel weekends. Inbound flights were held on the ground at their departure airports or diverted to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood and other nearby airports while the ground stop was in effect, a standard procedure the FAA uses to keep aircraft from stacking up over an active emergency scene.

At least one motorist required extrication from a vehicle struck by the aircraft, and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said it sent a large contingent of units and personnel to the scene, coordinating a response that spanned the runway, the adjacent roadway and a nearby trauma receiving area. Emergency crews had to fight an aircraft fire, extract occupants from damaged vehicles and manage a mass-casualty response simultaneously, a combination county officials said stretched resources even for a department accustomed to airport emergencies. County officials said the road adjacent to the runway carries regular commercial and commuter traffic throughout the day, raising separate questions about buffer distances between active runways and public roadways at airports built out long before current cargo volumes existed.

An aging freighter under contract to Amazon

Miami International is one of the busiest cargo gateways in the United States, particularly for freight and passenger traffic to and from Latin America and the Caribbean — the route the aircraft was flying when it came down. The plane was not owned or crewed by Amazon directly; like much of the Prime Air network, it was flown by a contract cargo operator, 21 Air, under Amazon's branding, a common arrangement in which Amazon leases capacity from independent air carriers rather than operating aircraft itself. MIA is South Florida's largest employer hub tied to a single facility and one of the top freight airports in the Western Hemisphere by cargo tonnage, and prolonged runway closures there ripple quickly through both passenger schedules and the perishable-goods and e-commerce shipments that move through its cargo apron daily. The aircraft's age and its freighter conversion are expected to be examined as part of the investigation, along with the flight crew's approach and braking performance; one preliminary estimate circulating among investigators put the aircraft's speed at roughly 128 mph at the point it left the runway, well above typical taxi speeds and consistent with a landing that did not slow as expected.

Fatal runway excursions involving U.S. cargo freighters are uncommon, and Sunday's crash is expected to draw scrutiny not only to the specific flight but to the broader practice of converting decades-old passenger widebodies into freighters for continued service long after their original passenger-carrying life would have ended.

Amazon's Prime Air cargo network has expanded rapidly over the past decade to move packages between the company's fulfillment centers and regional hubs, relying on a mix of contract carriers flying under the Prime Air livery rather than a single in-house airline. That structure means incidents involving Prime Air-branded aircraft can raise questions about oversight responsibility shared between Amazon, the contracted operator and federal regulators, even though Amazon does not itself hold the aircraft's operating certificate. 21 Air has operated cargo charter and contract flying for over a decade, including previous work for other freight customers beyond Amazon.

Five dead, and a fire department stretched thin

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Ray Jadallah described a chaotic scene as crews arrived. "What we found was a very complex situation," he said, citing simultaneous demands to fight the fire, treat the injured on the roadway and secure the runway environment.

"We're heartbroken to learn that five people lost their lives in today's incident at Miami International Airport," an Amazon spokesperson said. "Our deepest sympathies go out to the families, loved ones, and all those affected by this devastating loss."

Mayor Levine Cava confirmed the toll publicly Sunday evening: five dead and five injured, three in critical condition and transported to a regional trauma center, with the remaining two taken to area hospitals. The identities of those killed had not been released as of Sunday night pending notification of relatives. It remained unclear how many of the dead were aboard the aircraft as opposed to in vehicles struck on the roadway, a detail investigators are expected to clarify in the coming days.

Investigators descend as questions mount

The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a Go Team to Miami, led by Chair Jennifer Homendy, with a preliminary briefing expected Monday. NTSB Go Teams typically include specialists covering aircraft structures, systems, powerplants, operations and human performance, who will examine flight-data and cockpit-voice recordings alongside physical evidence from the runway and crash site. The FAA and NTSB are jointly investigating the cause, including the aircraft's approach speed, runway conditions and braking performance, as well as 21 Air's maintenance history for the aircraft. NPR reported that investigators will also examine the aircraft's 2015 freighter conversion as part of the inquiry.

MIA officials said passengers should expect continued disruptions into Monday as the airport works through a backlog built up during the closure; CBS News Miami reported average delays of several hours across the airport Sunday evening. CNN reported that the two remaining closed runways were expected to reopen once the wreckage is cleared and the roadway investigation concludes. A preliminary NTSB report, which typically lays out a factual timeline without assigning cause, is expected within several weeks, while a final determination of probable cause in cases of this scale often takes a year or more.

The crash is also likely to intensify scrutiny of aging widebody freighter conversions more broadly. Airlines and cargo operators have increasingly turned to converting older passenger aircraft into freighters as a cheaper alternative to buying new production freighters, a trend regulators have watched closely as the converted fleet ages further. Aviation safety analysts say investigators will likely compare Sunday's crash against maintenance and inspection records required under the aircraft's freighter conversion certification to determine whether structural or systems issues tied to the conversion played any role, separate from the question of pilot technique on approach.