A passenger plane with 126 people on boardof a low cost airline from the Dominican Republic crashed this Tuesday at Miami International Airport without fatalities being recorded.
According to Miami’s El Nuevo Herald, at least three people were injured in the accident of RED Air Flight 203, which suffered a malfunction in the landing gear, causing it to skid on the runway and stop in a grassy area.
Social media posts showed passengers walking away from the plane, some carrying children, others running with carry-on luggage and several more recording cellphone videos.
“When our fire crews arrived they saw that the wing of the plane was on fire and they quickly tried to put out the fire using specialized foam trucks,” said Erika Benítez, a spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue Department.
“All passengers were able to get off the plane, the three injured people were taken to local hospitals,” Benítez said, as firefighters worked to mitigate a fuel spill on the runway.
The plane “scraped” the southern runway closest to Perimeter Road, the closest to Highway 836 (Dolphins Expressway) and did not hit anything else, according to airport spokesman Gregory Chin.
The accident forced authorities to close two runways, delaying several flights. But the busiest section of the airport, the far north, where American Airlines handles 70 percent of air traffic, was not affected.
The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80, was arriving from the Dominican Republic, the base of operations for RED Air, an airline founded last year with the hope of expanding throughout Latin America.