Officials arrived in Miami on Wednesday to investigate a passenger jet that caught fire on landing at the US city’s international airport, forcing more than 100 people to flee the burning and mangled plane.
Three people were hospitalized after the crash of Red Air Flight 203 late Tuesday, according to Miami-Dade Fire Department officials, but no deaths or serious injuries were reported among those on board.
Dramatic video footage showed people being evacuated from the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 plane lying askew on the runway with their noses wrinkled while thick black smoke billowed from its body.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the US government agency responsible for investigating civil aviation accidents, said the plane’s left main landing gear collapsed during landing.
The plane then “departed the runway” before coming to rest on a patch of grass, it said, with fire erupting on the right side.
Red Air, a Dominican low-cost airline that only took off in November last year, said the plane had arrived from Santo Domingo when it encountered “technical difficulties”.
The investigators were able to recover the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the plane. You will additionally examine the runway markings and the physical environment.
Red Air and the NTSB said there were 130 passengers and 10 crew members on board.
#Passenger #plane #catches #fire #landing #Miami #airport
