Mike Slack Speaks with Spectrum News Following Fatal Miami Amazon Cargo Crash
Our managing partner, and aviation attorney, Mike Slack was interviewed by Spectrum News 13 following the fatal runway overrun at Miami International Airport on September 6. Five people were killed and five injured when a Boeing 767-300 freighter operated by 21 Air for Amazon Air overran the runway while landing and struck vehicles on a roadway outside the airport perimeter.
Our thoughts are with the families of those killed and with everyone still recovering.
The crash closed the airport for hours and forced widespread diversions across Florida. Roughly 20 Miami-bound flights were rerouted to Orlando International Airport alone. Mike, who is a licensed pilot and a former NASA aerospace engineer, described the coordination that goes into rerouting aircraft mid-flight, with each crew assessing reserve fuel and time available while working the problem with air traffic control. He called it “a tremendous logistical undertaking.”
On the overrun itself, Mike noted that these accidents rarely have a single cause. Weather is often a factor, and flight crew decision-making and a possible malfunction of the aircraft systems needed to slow the airplane are both possibilities that cannot be ruled out at this stage. He emphasized that the National Transportation Safety Board investigation, which could take six months to a year, will determine what actually happened.
Slack Davis will continue to monitor updates as the investigation progresses.