A 126-passenger plane crashed and caught fire in Miami
The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 arrived from the Dominican Republic, the home base of RED Air, an airline founded last year in hopes of expanding into Latin America.
A passenger plane, with 126 people on board, of a low cost airline of the Dominican Republic crashed and caught fire on Tuesday at miami International Airport without fatalities.
According to Miami’s El Nuevo Herald, at least three people were injured by the crash of RED Air Flight 203, which suffered a malfunction in the landing gear, so it skidded on the runway and stopped in a grassy area.
Social media posts showed passengers walking away from the plane, some carrying their children, others running with their carry-on luggage and several more recording videos with cell phones.
What happened
“When our fire crews arrived they saw that the wing of the plane was on fire and quickly tried to put out the fire using specialized foam trucks,” said Erika Benitez, a spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue Department.
“All passengers were able to get off the plane, the three injured people were taken to local hospitals,” Benitez said, as firefighters worked to mitigate a fuel spill on the runway.
The plane “scraped” the southern runway closest to Perimeter Road, the most immediate to Highway 836 (Dolphins Expressway) and hit nothing else, according to airport spokesman Gregory Chin.
Flight delay
The crash forced authorities to close two runways, delaying several flights. But the busiest section of the airport, the far north, where American Airlines has 70 percent of air traffic, was not affected.
