More fear than harm for the hundred passengers present in the aircraft. American investigators arrived on Wednesday June 22 at Miami airport (southeast) where a plane from the Dominican company Red Air landed on Tuesday with landing gear problemcausing a fire and the evacuation of a hundred peoplethree of whom were injured.
Images relayed by American media show the device, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 which came from the Dominican Republic, across the tarmac, half in the grass, its nose shattered, while the passengers left the cabin hastily on one side, black smoke being visible on the other.
A team of investigators from the US transportation security agency, the NTSB, arrived on site Wednesday morning, according to a statement. The black boxes of the device have been recovered and will be analyzed. The investigators, who spoke with the rescue teams, will also be able to access the interior of the device, once it has been emptied of its fuel.
“Technical difficulties”
“The aircraft suffered a collapse of its left main landing gear while arriving on runway 9, is ran off the runway and came to rest in a grassy area“, said the NTSB. A fire then broke out “on the right side” of the device.
“Three patients have been transported to nearby hospitals,” Miami Fire Department said earlier, adding that they had “limited the fuel leak.”
Flight L5-203 “experienced technical difficulties” when it landed around 5:45 p.m. local time, Red Air, a small low-cost airline based in the Dominican Republic and launched in November, said on Twitter. She specifies that 130 passengers and 10 crew members were evacuated from the aircraft.
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