Amazon Cargo Plane Kills Five on a Miami Perimeter Road

A 21 Air Boeing 767 flying for Amazon left Miami International’s Runway 30 at 112 knots on September 6, struck vehicles on a public road, and killed five people. The Prime Air freighter had arrived from San Juan, Puerto Rico, at 1:53 p.m. Fire crews found the 32-year-old jet burning beside warehouse traffic.

Amazon’s smile is on the fuselage. 21 Air held the flying certificate. Crews pulled both pilots from the cockpit, and several people had to be cut from cars. Officials have not named the dead.

The Overrun Hit a Road Used by Warehouse Traffic

Flight 7598, call sign Cargo South, was a scheduled cargo run from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport to Miami. It is logged as 2I7598 and CSB7598. Touchdown on Runway 30 came at 17:53 UTC, 2 hours 11 minutes after a 15:42 UTC departure from San Juan.

ADS-B data from Flightradar24 put the jet at 112 knots, about 129 mph, as it left the usable runway, with a last received speed of 69 knots. The registration N1997A flight history matches that trace. The 767 crossed the field boundary, ran over a public road used by warehouse workers and nearby businesses, and came to rest near a parking lot that serves an Amazon warehouse, among other tenants.

THE AFTERNOON IN FIGURES

• Touchdown: 1:53 p.m. local on Runway 30 after the San Juan sector.
• Exit speed: 112 knots as the jet left the usable pavement, 69 knots on the last ADS-B hit.
• Fire response: More than 60 Miami-Dade Fire Rescue units and about 200 people.
• Traffic: About 250 flights delayed, with a ground stop lifted around 5 p.m. ET.

A LATAM Cargo 767 had landed on the same runway about 20 minutes earlier. Inspection crews later said they found no aircraft parts on the pavement, though the jet damaged navigational gear when it left the hard surface. The airframe came to rest on its belly and stayed largely in one piece even after the fire.

On a radio call from the scene, a first responder said, “Guys, the plane’s on fire. Plane’s on fire. Put your game faces on.”

Who Flies Amazon Prime Air Cargo Jets?

Amazon does not hold an air operator certificate for these flights. 21 Air, a cargo airline based in Greensboro, North Carolina, with a heavy operating base in Miami, flew the trip under a crew, maintenance, and insurance contract. The same carrier also flies 767s for DHL.

Kelly Nantel, Amazon’s director of corporate global media relations, said the airplane “was operated by 21 Air” and was attempting to land when the incident occurred. She said the company was working with local officials “to understand exactly what happened,” and that its priority was the care of everyone involved. In a later statement she said Amazon was heartbroken that five people had lost their lives.

We are devastated by the accident involving one of our aircraft in Miami today.

Keith Winters, CEO, 21 Air

Winters, cooperating fully with federal investigators, said the airline’s first jobs were support for those hit, help for the authorities, and accurate information as it became available. 21 Air was founded on February 25, 2014. Avia Acquisitions holds the company. Houston Astros owner Jim Crane’s group has been the majority backer. Cargojet sold a 25 percent stake in April 2026.

Amazon began moving 767s onto 21 Air’s certificate in November 2024, taking flying that had sat with Atlas Air. That shift is why a relatively small carrier’s jet was wearing Prime Air paint on a Sunday into Miami.

Built to Carry People, Then Converted for Freight

N1997A is a Boeing 767-33AER(BDSF), manufacturer serial number 27310, with two General Electric CF6-80C2B6F engines. It flew as a passenger jet from 1994 to 2015, a span of 21 years, then was rebuilt as a freighter. 21 Air took it for Amazon Prime Air work in January 2025.

Converted 767s are the workhorses of Amazon’s domestic air network because they were already built, already certified, and cheaper than new freighters. The trade is age. This airframe was 32 years old when it left the runway. Cargo conversions also change how the jet sits on its gear and how its weight is spread, which is one of the items a safety board will reconstruct from the recorders and the wreckage.

None of that assigns blame. It does fix the machine that ended up on a public road: an old passenger widebody, rebuilt for boxes, flown by a contractor, painted for a retailer that does not hold the certificate.

Runway 30 Is the Short Diagonal

Miami International has four runways. The accident used the northwest-southeast diagonal, Runway 12-30. Miami-Dade’s own capital papers put Runway 12-30 listed at 9,355 feet long and 150 feet wide, shorter than the two big east-west strips.

MIAMI INTERNATIONAL’S FOUR RUNWAYS

Beyond many U.S. runway ends, airports that lack room for a full safety strip install a crushable cement bed known as EMAS, built to sink the tires and stop a jet at speeds up to 70 knots. Michael Meyers, manager of the FAA’s Airport Engineering Division, has said that system has a perfect record of saving lives in the events where it has been used. About 130 U.S. airports have it, including six in Florida. Miami International is not one of them.

The FAA instead requires a 1,000-foot runway safety area beyond the pavement when the land is there. Meyers has said Miami International, Miami Executive, and North Perry meet that standard, so they are not required to install the crushable bed. Sunday’s jet left the usable runway at 112 knots, well above that 70-knot design speed, and did not stop before a public road.

Weather at 17:53 UTC was not gentle. The METAR on the field showed thunderstorms, scattered cumulonimbus at 2,000 feet, visibility 10 miles, and wind from 190 degrees at 17 knots, gusting to 26, with a peak of 26 knots from 180 recorded at 17:52. Temperature was 30 C and the dew point 22 C. A wind shift had been logged at 17:37. Cause is for the safety board. The tape already shows a wet, gusty afternoon and a diagonal runway that ends toward warehouse pavement.

Cars, a Cockpit, and a Fuel Leak

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at least five people had died. Fire Rescue Chief Raied “Ray” Jadallah said five people were hurt, three of them critically and taken to a trauma center, two others to a local hospital. Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz said there was no wider threat to the public while crews stayed on a fuel leak.

Jadallah called it a very complex scene. His crews were on site within 30 seconds of the call, he said, and found heavy fire in engine compartments. They ran search and rescue for a pilot and copilot trapped in the aircraft and for people trapped in cars. Specialized teams extricated occupants from vehicles. One person had to be taken from under a vehicle. As of late afternoon Sunday, the fuel leak was still being fought.

Levine Cava said rescue crews arrived within seconds and that the focus was the families, the injured, and the live response. None of the victims have been identified. Officials said it was too early to say whether the five who died were on the airplane, in the vehicles, or some mix of both. What they did say is that the pilots were removed from the jet and treated, and that several people on the road had to be cut free.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The crew: Both pilots were trapped in the cockpit, then pulled out and treated.
• The road: Several people were trapped in vehicles on a public perimeter road, and one person was trapped under a vehicle.
• The field: Thunderstorms and gusts to 26 knots were on the official observation at landing, and a LATAM Cargo 767 had landed on Runway 30 about 20 minutes earlier.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The names: Officials have not identified the five who died or the five who were hurt.
• Who died: The county has not said whether the dead were in cars, on the jet, or both.
• The cause: Reverse thrust, a late go-around, and landing-gear failure have been offered online; none of that is established.

An unverified account from a person describing themselves as a Miami airport worker said the copilot called for a go-around three times. That claim has not been backed by the FAA, the NTSB, or 21 Air.

Amazon Shifted These Freighters From Atlas Air

Prime Air is a paint job and a network, not a single airline. Public fleet boards show Amazon Prime Air 767s assigned to 21 Air alongside jets flown by ABX Air and Air Transport International. Amazon supplies many of the airframes. The contractors supply the crews, the maintenance, and the legal certificate.

WHO FLIES THE PRIME AIR 767S

• 21 Air: Greensboro certificate, Miami flying base, the operator of N1997A since January 2025.
• ABX Air: Another long-running Amazon contractor on converted 767s.
• Air Transport International: A third certificate holding Prime Air 767s on the same public fleet board.

Planespotters, updated on September 2, 2026, credited 21 Air with a fleet of 22 aircraft and an average age of 29.1 years, including 17 Boeing 767s. That is the pool Amazon tapped when it moved about seven 767s off Atlas Air in late 2024. The hidden cost of that model showed up on a public road: the retailer gets lift without an airline certificate, and the people off the end of Runway 30 meet whatever contractor is on the trip that day.

The airport shut all four runways after the crash, on a Labor Day weekend. Two of the four were back in use by Sunday evening. Some flights were sent to Orlando International, more than 200 miles north. The FAA kept a ground delay in place into September 7 because the disabled jet was still on the field.

Homendy’s Go Team Is on the Ground in Miami

The National Transportation Safety Board launched a go team for what it called a runway excursion accident involving a B-767-300 cargo airplane operated as 21 Air Flight 7598. Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy is the board member on scene. The FAA said it will investigate as well.

NTSB has launched a go team to investigate Sunday's runway excursion accident involving a B-767-300 cargo airplane at Miami International Airport. The airplane was operated as 21 Air Flight 7598 from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami, Florida. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy will…

— NTSB Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) September 6, 2026

The board said a Miami media briefing would be scheduled for September 7, with the time and place to be posted on that same account. Until that briefing, the facts that will not move are the ones already on the ground. A contractor 767 left a 9,355-foot diagonal at 112 knots, crossed a road that warehouse traffic uses every day, and killed five people whose names have not been released.