Both pilots aboard the Amazon cargo jet that ran off a runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday survived the crash. Everyone who died was on the ground.
That was the picture the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board set out at its first briefing on the accident, held at the airport at 4 p.m. Monday and streamed by the agency. Five people were killed and five were injured, three of them critically. All of them were on the ground; the two pilots were the only people aboard the aircraft.
“I would describe it in one word — devastating,” NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said of the scene. “Utter devastation.”
What the board says happened
Amazon Air flight 7598, a Boeing 767-300 operated by Miami-based 21 Air, landed on Runway 30 at about 1:53 p.m. Sunday after a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico. The aircraft is 32 years old, and the two pilots were the only people on board.
It ran off the end of the runway and struck navigational aids and airport equipment, then hit a white Ford Econoline van carrying seven workers for an aircraft-cleaning contractor. It went through the airport’s perimeter fence and struck a Toyota Corolla Cross on Northwest 67th Avenue before stopping in a grassy field.
Both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder have been recovered.
What investigators will examine
Homendy said a team of 32 investigators is working on the accident, covering operations, human performance, the flight’s history, crew experience and training, and how the aircraft performed. The board will also look at 21 Air’s procedures and its relationship with Amazon, at air traffic control, and at Federal Aviation Administration oversight.
One line of inquiry is what was not at the end of Runway 30. Homendy said investigators will examine the absence of an engineered materials arresting system — a bed of crushable blocks laid beyond a runway end that collapses under an aircraft’s wheels and brings it to a stop. Many U.S. runways have one; this one did not.
The board did not offer a cause, and Homendy said none would be determined at the scene. “The recovery of victims is most important,” she said. “The investigation and access to the aircraft, as well as evidence, can wait.”
TDot News reported the crash on Sunday, when no agency had released a casualty figure. Monday’s briefing is the first full official account of what happened after the aircraft touched down.
Source: NTSB media briefing, Miami International Airport, 7 September 2026.
