An Amazon Air cargo plane overshot the runway while attempting to land at Miami International Airport, killing five people and seriously injuring five more.
The Boeing 767-300 cargo aircraft crashed just before 14:00 local time (19:00 GMT) after departing from Luis Muñoz MarÃn International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The flight also hit several vehicles on the ground.
Amazon said that it is “working closely with local authorities and officials to understand exactly what happened”.
All flights were ordered grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as fire crews raced to the smoking crash site. The crash comes over Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest travel times of the year.
“At least five people have lost their lives, and five others are injured,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference on Sunday evening.
She added that rescue crews arrived at the scene within “seconds” of the crash.
“Right now, our focus is on the families, those who were injured, and the ongoing response,” she continued.
Three of the five people injured are in critical condition, said Miami Fire Chief Raied Jadallah. The mayor said they were all taken to hospital with “unknown injuries”.
Several of the injured were trapped inside or under vehicles on the ground, and needed to be extricated by fire and rescue crews, said Jadallah.
Officials say it is too early to know the cause of the crash, and that it will be investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board. The federal agency, which investigates all air crashes in the US, plans to hold a news conference on Monday.
The Amazon flight operated by 21 Air, a charter company based in North Carolina, “overran Miami International Airport’s diagonal runway and is disabled at the northwest end of the airport,” the airport said in a statement.
Miami Dade Fire Rescue said crews “arrived to find an airplane that had caught on fire as a result of this crash, with heavy flames and smoke showing”.
