By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
The call came in Sunday morning: a cargo jet down just past the runway at Miami International Airport, vehicles struck, fire crews scrambling.
By day's end, five people were confirmed dead. At least five more were injured, according to NBC News. The aircraft, operating under the Amazon Air brand, had flown in from Puerto Rico before it ran off the runway and plowed into several vehicles on the ground, CBS News and the BBC reported.
The plane itself was not owned or flown by Amazon employees. Per the New York Times, the aircraft was operated by 21 Air, one of several contract carriers Amazon uses to move packages through its worldwide shipping network — an arrangement common in the cargo industry but one that can complicate questions of accountability when something goes wrong.
The crash carried an uncomfortable echo. The Times noted that a strikingly similar accident killed five people at the same airport in 1997, underscoring Miami's long-standing role as a gateway for cargo traffic to the Caribbean and Latin America — and the risks that come with it.
The disruption rippled through the terminal. Passengers found security lines and restaurants unusually empty as travelers scrambled to rebook flights and figure out how to get where they were going, the Times reported.
No cause has been officially determined. Federal investigators typically lead inquiries into runway overruns, examining weather, weight load, mechanical performance and crew actions — but as of Sunday night, none of that had been made public. [Editor's note: cause of the crash remains under investigation; findings not yet available from official sources.]
The National Transportation Safety Board customarily opens an investigation into accidents of this kind; no timeline for findings had been announced.
— Compiled from reporting by CBS News, NBC News, the New York Times, and the BBC.
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