Flight 7598 was coming in from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Nothing about that route makes headlines normally, cargo runs like it happen all day, every day, all over Florida. This one landed around 1:58 p.m. Sunday and didn't stop where it was supposed to. Flightradar24 data pulled after the fact showed the plane doing close to 130 mph when it ran off the end of the diagonal runway it had touched down on.
It didn't stop there either. It crossed the runway, crossed the airport's own boundary line, and ended up on a stretch of road that had cars on it.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue says it sent more than 60 units, close to 200 people. What they found, per the department's own statement, was the plane sitting well past the airport boundary, already burning, smoke pouring off it. You could see the smoke from a long way off. It shows up in basically every photo and video from the scene. Some drivers got trapped in their own vehicles and had to be cut out by MDFR's technical rescue crews. Firefighters were also searching the wreckage for the two pilots. No word yet, one way or the other, on what happened to them.
There was a fuel leak too. Active, according to fire officials, still being handled hours after everything else had supposedly calmed down.
Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz gave the number at an evening press conference: five dead, five hurt, three of those in critical condition. She couldn't say, or wouldn't yet, whether the dead had been on the plane or just unlucky enough to be underneath where it landed.
FAA called a ground stop around 2:30, half an hour or so after the crash. Every flight headed to Miami, from anywhere, got held on the ground wherever it happened to be. That's a big deal for an airport this size. For a while there were no arrivals, no departures, nothing. A few runways came back online that evening once the scene got cleared enough for investigators to start their work, though the wrecked plane itself stayed right where it stopped, out near the northwest end of the field.
Monday morning things were better. Not fixed. Better.
That part takes time. FAA and NTSB people are already there, which is just what happens with a crash this size, but actual answers tend to take months. Sometimes longer. They'll pull the flight recorders if they can, go through maintenance paperwork, check what the weather was doing on approach. Standard stuff. Right now the only real number anyone has is the speed, and honestly it's not a great one: 130 mph with the runway already gone.
Amazon says yes, that was one of their branded planes, though they don't fly it themselves. A company spokesperson, Kelly Nantel, said Amazon is "heartbroken to learn that five people lost their lives" and that they'd cooperate with whatever the investigation needs. Safety and care for everyone affected, she said, is the priority right now.
21 Air actually operated the flight. They haven't put out much yet. This kind of setup is normal in cargo aviation, by the way, Amazon leases capacity from a handful of carriers and slaps its own branding on the outside, so the plane on fire in Miami said "Prime Air" on the tail even though nobody at Amazon was anywhere near the cockpit.
Amazon-branded cargo planes have crashed before. An Atlas Air 767 went down near Anahuac, Texas, back in 2019, flying from Miami to Houston, killing all three people aboard. Different airline, different cause as far as anyone determined, a different crash entirely really. Worth mentioning anyway. Cargo flights carry real risk, same as any other kind, even without passengers buying tickets to be on them.
Right now Miami International is mostly working again, still sorting out delays, still fielding questions nobody has good answers to. The runway itself stays closed until further notice.
An Amazon-branded cargo plane, 21 Air Flight 7598, overran the runway landing at Miami International Airport Sunday afternoon, crashed into several vehicles and caught fire. At least five people are dead, five more hurt, three critically. Officials still hadn't said by Sunday evening whether those killed were on the plane or on the ground below. FAA and NTSB are both investigating. Cause unknown for now.
