Three people were hospitalized after the crash of Red Air Flight 203, according to Miami-Dade fire officials. But no deaths or serious injuries were reported among the more than 130 passengers and 10 crew members on board.
“The aircraft suffered a left main landing gear collapse during landing on runway 9; it left the runway and landed on a grassy area between runways 9 and 23,” the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the US agency in charge of investigating civil aviation accidents, said in a statement.
“After leaving the runway, a fire broke out on the right side of the plane,” added the agency in charge of finding out why the accident occurred in Miami.
Red Air, a low-cost Dominican airline launched in November 2021, said the plane was arriving from Santo Domingo when it encountered “technical difficulties.”
NTSB investigators will survey the scene in the coming days, shipping the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder to its lab in Washington on Thursday, according to the statement.
A video published by various media outlets shows the evacuation of the plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, lopsided on the runway with its nose bent as thick black smoke billows from the fuselage.
“I thought I was going to die,” a passenger on the plane, Paola Garcia, told NBC South Florida. “I had an old man next to me and I hugged him. It was horrible,” added the 18-year-old.
The entrance Passenger plane catches fire on landing in Miami was first published in diary TODAY.
