Labor Day Monday opens on a wreck. Five dead at Miami. The NTSB briefs today.

A Boeing 767 flying as Prime Air Flight 7598 overran the diagonal runway at Miami International Airport a little before 2 p.m. Sunday, left the pavement at something near 130 miles an hour, struck vehicles on a road that serves the warehouses around the field, and caught fire. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said five people are dead and five are injured. Three of the injured are critical. Names have not been released. Officials would not say Sunday night whether the dead were on the airplane, in the cars, or both. The U.S. desk files the wreck as it sat: a converted passenger jet on its belly in the grass, Labor Day traffic stacked behind a ground stop, and a county that had to count bodies before it could count flights.

The airplane had come from Luis Muñoz Marín International in San Juan. The Federal Aviation Administration named the operator: 21 Air, a cargo carrier with a North Carolina certificate and an operations bench in Miami, flying the trip for Amazon. The airframe is 32 years old. It was built to carry people, flew that job for more than two decades, and was converted to freight in 2015, according to Flightradar24. Tail N1997A still wears Prime Air on the fuselage. Conversion is not a crime. It is a fact the investigators will have to live with: an old widebody, a holiday field, a runway that did not hold.

Flight data put the jet at about 112 knots — 129 mph — when it ran out of usable pavement on runway 30, more than 9,000 feet of concrete. Inspection crews later said they found no parts on the strip itself. The airplane damaged navigational gear as it left the edge and came to rest near a parking lot that serves an Amazon warehouse and the businesses that live off the airport’s back fence. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, arriving in seconds by the fire chief’s clock, found flames in an engine compartment and a fuel leak that was still a problem hours later. About 200 firefighters and more than 60 units rolled. Two people were trapped in vehicles the jet hit. The fire chief, Raied Jadallah, said the pilot and copilot were trapped in the airplane. How those accounts add to five dead is a question for the Monday briefing, not for a rewrite of a press conference.

Amazon’s Kelly Nantel said the company was heartbroken and was working with local authorities. That is the statement a company issues when it does not yet know what it owns. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told the country to expect delays and cancellations. He was not guessing. FlightAware had more than 160 cancellations and hundreds of delays by late Sunday — Labor Day weekend at one of the busiest airports in the United States. The field shut all runways and taxiways, then put two of four back in service by evening. A ground delay into Monday is still on the book because the airplane is still on the ground.

The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team under Chair Jennifer Homendy. The FAA said it will investigate. Cause is not in. Thunderstorms and wind gusts up to 30 mph were in the area at the time, the National Weather Service recorded. That is weather. It is not a finding. This newspaper will not write a wind shear into a hole the recorders have not filled.

Monday is Labor Day. Homendy’s go team is due to brief in Miami. The airplane is still a disabled hull on the northwest end of the field. FlightAware closed Sunday at 187 cancellations and 266 delays; the FAA told passengers to expect more than six hours on average. Orlando took diversions. Two of four runways came back Sunday evening. The ground delay is written into Monday because the jet has not moved.

Miami is a cargo city that pretends, on a holiday, to be a passenger city. The same weekend AAA printed the first Labor Day above $4 gasoline on record — $4.15, with diesel at $5.88 — a Prime airplane left the runway that feeds the warehouses. The Sunday morning lead was the pump. The Sunday evening lead was the hull. Labor Day Monday is both: a war in the Gulf that prices the truck, and a 767 that could not stop.

The U.S. desk does not file Amazon. It files five dead on a service road, three people in a trauma bay, a converted jet, and a holiday that already had a number. The runway did not hold. The investigation starts at daylight.

Five people lost their lives and five others were injured.

Originally published at rocketmedia.news.

Filed under U.S.