The Cargo Plane Was Landing Normally. Then It Just Didn't Stop.

It was just before 2 p.m. Sunday, and the cargo flight from San Juan looked like any other landing at Miami International Airport. It wasn't. By the time the Boeing 767 finally came to rest, it was off the runway entirely, on fire, next to a road it had no business being anywhere near.

21 Air Flight 7598, operating under the Amazon Prime Air brand, overran Runway 30 while landing after a flight from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Preliminary data from Flightradar24 shows the aircraft was traveling at roughly 128 miles per hour when it left the usable portion of the runway. It struck multiple vehicles on a road adjacent to the airport, trapping people inside them, before coming to rest in a field beside the roadway near two semi-trucks. The pilot and co-pilot were also trapped in the wreckage.

Five people are dead. Three others were taken to a trauma center in critical condition, and two more were hospitalized with less severe injuries. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue sent more than 60 units and roughly 200 personnel to the scene, working to extinguish flames and free people trapped in the wreckage and the struck vehicles simultaneously.

The plane was a 32-year-old Boeing 767-300, originally built to carry passengers and flown by several airlines for more than two decades before it was converted into a cargo freighter in 2015. It was operated by 21 Air, one of the contracted carriers that fly under the Amazon Prime Air brand rather than being owned outright by Amazon.

The National Transportation Safety Board has dispatched a team led by chairwoman Jennifer Homendy to investigate why a routine cargo landing ended with the aircraft nearly a quarter-mile past where it should have stopped. Boeing and 21 Air have both said they are cooperating with the investigation. Runway overruns are investigated for a specific set of recurring causes — mechanical brake or reverse-thrust failure, a wet or contaminated runway, excess landing speed, or some combination — and identifying which applies here will likely take months, not days.