A cargo plane crashed near Miami airport in 1997. See original coverage

The deadly crash of an Amazon cargo plane at Miami International Airport evokes the memory of a Fine Air cargo plane that crashed at the edge of the airport after takeoff nearly 30 years ago.

See the original Miami Herald coverage of that crash, published Aug. 7, 1997:

INFERNO FROM ABOVE CRASH OF CARGO JET KILLS 4 NEAR MIAMI INTERNATIONAL TERRIFIED WORKERS, DRIVERS IN BUSY DISTRICT ARE SPARED

By Manny Garcia, Arnold Markowitz and Joseph Tanfani, Miami Herald staff writers

A plane loaded with nearly 88,000 pounds of pants-parts crashed after takeoff from Miami International Airport on Thursday, bounced in an open field, exploded into a fireball, fell apart, skidded across four lanes of a busy highway and a car-filled parking lot. Its nose came to rest inside a computer store.

The toll was tragic but confined to those aboard: the pilot, the co-pilot, a flight engineer and a security guard aboard a Fine Air DC-8 bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

With no other deaths confirmed, it may end up being called the miracle on 72nd Avenue.

“He was a hero — a hero for diverting that crash from more casualties,” Metro-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas said of the pilot. “This community owes a big debt to that man.”

In an escape bordering on the miraculous, the crash somehow spared motorists on Milam Dairy Road and terrified workers in a bustling industrial warehouse district west of the airport.

Part of the turbine came straight through the front window of Hexium Computer, one of several businesses destroyed in the International Airport Center mall.

“The flames were coming down around us. I don’t know how I didn’t get burned,” said Joseph Rodriguez, the computer store’s owner. Employees fled through the hole the engine left.

It was like a scene from a big-budget action film come to life: frightened workers sprinted for cover. Huge chunks of flaming fuselage fell across a six-lane thoroughfare, bursting into fireballs one by one. Debris scattered cars like toys in front of the strip mall along Milam Dairy Road at Northwest 28th Street, and ripped into the front of the building like shrapnel.

The crash brought home a terrifying reality: Miami International, once located on the fringes of Miami, is now smack dab in the middle of one of the busiest business districts in Dade.

One saving grace: Many workers were at lunch. “This was a tragic crash, a terrible incident in our community. However, we indeed were very lucky,” Penelas said. “This could’ve been a much worse incident.”

Rafael Curaezma was one of those who escaped. He was leaving his office in Techno-Corp., getting into his BMW to leave for lunch. Then he heard explosions overhead.

“I said, ‘That plane’s going down,’ so I started running. I’m running for my life,” he said. “I knew I had to get to the back of the warehouses because that was my only shelter. I look back, and the plane’s exploding right after me.

“If I had stayed where I was I would have been dead.”

The 30-year-old DC-8 had 18 mechanical problems reported to the Federal Aviation Administration since 1994. The plane has had at least three problem takeoffs in the past two years — two of them out of Miami.

In September 1995, noise and vibration forced the plane to return and land at MIA. In June 1996, the aircraft lost hydraulic pressure at takeoff and had to return.

In another incident last month, the plane landed at Miami with such force that it cracked one of the struts on the plane’s right side.

Fine Air Flight 101 had a flight crew of three plus a security guard aboard, airport officials said. Dead were the pilot Pat Thompson, 42, of Homestead, a former Marine who had been flying for 23 years, and co-pilot Steven Petrosky, 26. The others were not immediately identified.

The plane was carrying a load of unsewn men’s denim jeans to Santo Domingo, where they would be sewn and flown back to the United States, according to Michael Sheehan, spokesman for U.S. Customs.

It wasn’t clear whether that exceeded the plane’s maximum capacity, or whether the load contributed to the crash.

No determination of the cause has been made, though several witnesses reported seeing flames and smoke coming from the plane’s far-right engine.

An eight-person crew from the National Transportation Safety Board flew to Miami from Washington on Thursday. Both of the plane’s so-called black boxes, in-flight data recorders, were recovered.

“There’s a lot of speculation as to what it could have been. It very well could have been pilot error, or it could have been a problem with this particular aircraft,” said airport spokeswoman Lauren Gail Stover.

Charles Petrosky, 57, of Califon, N.J., confirmed that his son Steven was the co-pilot on the flight.

Charles Petrosky said he had visited South Florida in July and that his son had mentioned safety concerns at Fine Air.

“Steven said it wasn’t the safest air line around,” said Charles Petrosky. “He said some of the pilots were talking of getting together and doing something about it.”

The elder Petrosky said he did not know what had come of that idea. But industry consultants said Fine Air — although it had a troubled past — was a solidly run cargo airline. These operations typically use older planes, they said.

“It’s a well-run airline,” said Miami aviation consultant Bob Booth.

The plane went down tail first at 12:34 p.m. over the heads of thousands of workers in the the industrial neighborhood crammed with computer stores, floral shops and warehouses.

Witness after witness told the same story: They heard two or three loud bangs overhead. They stopped and looked up and saw the plane’s wings wobble first right, then left, with the far right engine spitting smoke and fire.

They said the airplane took off but did not get above the highest Florida Power & Light lines along the west side of the airport. The plane appeared to go between the lowest and highest FPL lines.

Witnesses saw the plane stall, with its tail at a sickening, nearly vertical angle before it went down.

The tail hit in a vacant lot on the east side of Milam Dairy Road, sandwiched between a warehouse for Eagle Brands on the north and the V&F Center warehouse on the south. It hit a chain-link fence and dragged it across Milam Dairy Road.

The aircraft kept moving, skidding, belly to the ground, its fuselage coming apart from rear to front in sequence, each one bursting into flame as it hit.

“It started breaking up in pieces, and each piece that hit the ground ignited. Bam, bam bam. When it hit the ground, I felt the flame,” said John Hope, a corrections worker.

Workers in the stores went to the windows and saw the flaming cockpit coming.

‘“Everybody was yelling, ‘Run! Run! Run!’ “ said Mildred Marquez, who fled from Asian Sources Computer. “We didn’t know it was an airplane. We were going crazy. We thought we were all going to die.”

In the northbound lanes, two jet engines fell off, burning. A wing was severed on the grassy median strip, more pieces landing in the southbound lanes. The plane’s nose, on fire end to end, landed on the other side of the street and slammed through the front of Hexium, the computer store.

The offices were relatively empty at lunch hour. People in the parking lot ran for cover, and the few people left in the stores took cover in the backs of their buildings.

Rick Barocas, owner of a dive shop named the Florida Frogman, 2852 NW 72nd Ave., was trapped in his office with another employee when the plane crashed near his building.

“I got up and walked to our one window and right as I walked out, a ball of fire passed in front of the window,” Barocas said. “I could feel the heat through the glass.”

“This is unbelievable. I cannot believe anybody survived this thing.”

A few doors down at the strip mall management office, employee Angel Ralat and mall owner Bruce Fish heard the sound of a plane losing power and walked to the front of the business. Fish saw a fireball coming their way, grabbed Ralat and ran inside.

Ralat saw people climbing over cargo that had fallen directly in front the glass of Hobbies Trains. He ran back and helped pull four people to safety.

The storefront, gaping and charred, looked like someone had taken a bulldozer and pushed flaming cars inside.

On Milam Dairy Road, there was chaos. Dozens of fire engines pumped foam over the roadway and the burning buildings. Eastbound traffic on the Dolphin Expressway backed up for seven miles, all the way to Interstate 95.

But the airport continued to function nearly as normal, with only minimal flight delays.

Aviation experts said the crash sounded like a classic case of engine failure.

“Sounds like took off at a pretty steep angle, lost an engine and stalled,” said Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, who is now teaching public administration at Ohio State University in Columbus.

“I’m troubled by the witness reports that say it seemed to shoot straight up, which means it was taking off at a very sharp angle. That can cause to plane to stall, particularly if you lose an engine.

“Technically, you’re supposed to lose an engine and still be able to fly,” she said.

Since 1994, Fine Air has ranked as the largest all-cargo carrier at MIA, with 450 employees and a fleet of 15 DC-8 freighter aircraft serving South and Central America and the Carribbean.

Fine Air’s predecessor company, Agro Air, had a series of safety problems with federal regulators. In two of the most serious incidents, two Agro planes with foreign registry had to make emergency returns to Miami after engines failed.

The company paid a $350,000 fine to the U.S. Department of Transportation in 1991. Now, though, experts said Fine Air has improved dramatically. The crash came one day after the airline went public in a stock sale.

“Talk about bad timing,” said Stuart Klaskin, an aviation consultant and partner in Coral Gables-based Klaskin Kushner & Co.