MIAMI (AP) — Investigators are still trying to determine what caused an Amazon cargo jet to overshoot a runway in Miami and plow into two vehicles, killing five people on the ground.

The Boeing 767 hit a van on Miami International Airport property on Sunday before ramming through a fence and hitting an SUV on a public street. Five people who were a part of a cleaning crew in the van died while two survived. The pilot and co-pilot also lived.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called the scene at the airport “utter devastation.”

Hundreds of flights at the Miami airport have been delayed or canceled as authorities investigate the crash site, where the jet and a mangled white van have remained. By late Tuesday, only one of the airport’s four runways was still closed, raising the likelihood that the cancellations would begin to ease.

Here’s what to know about the crash.

Jet spent a long time over the runway before touching down

The NTSB said the plane barreled roughly 1,300 feet (396 meters) past the end of the runway.

It was landing after a two-hour flight from Puerto Rico as storms brewed around the Miami airport.

Homendy called the scene “utter devastation,” with pieces of the vehicles, air bags, destroyed navigational equipment and fencing along the plane’s route. Investigators didn’t have full access to the site until all the jet fuel was recovered from the plane Monday evening.

Former FAA official Mike O’Donnell said that the fact that the plane landed on its nose and right landing gear first demonstrates this was an unstable landing. He said the pilot might have been attempting a “go-around” to retry the landing approach.

Video of the landing showed the plane hovering above the runway for a long time without flaring the nose to force the wheels onto the ground. Experts said it appeared a strong tail wind propelled the plane far past the point where it was supposed to land. Air traffic controllers also had not changed the approach to the runway to allow the plane to land into a headwind. Investigators will want to know how quickly the winds shifted.

All the people killed were in a cleaning service van

Amazon said in a statement that it is cooperating with the investigation and the company’s deepest sympathies go to the victims and their families.

The five people killed were all in a van owned by Professional Ocean Service Corp., a company that cleans planes. The company said it wouldn’t comment on the crash out of respect for the families who lost loved ones.

“Our employees are far more than the people who work beside us each day, they are family, and they are deeply loved. Our hearts and prayers are with every employee and every family whose lives have been forever changed,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.

The Miami-Dade sheriff identified the deceased as Rolando Aleman Leon, 55; Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53; Julio C. Pineda, 75; Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53; and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47.

The jet started as a passenger plane before converting to cargo

The 32-year-old Boeing 767 was originally built to carry passengers and flew for several airlines in foreign countries for more than two decades before being converted to a cargo plane in 2015, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.

The final flight was operated by 21 Air, a cargo carrier based in North Carolina.

Homendy said the jet’s ownership history, maintenance records and operations by 21 Air would all be reviewed by NTSB investigators.

It’s the second crash of a cargo jet in the U.S. in less than a year. A UPS plane crashed after losing its engine while accelerating down the runway at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport in October. The crash killed all three pilots and 12 people on the ground. Twenty-three more were injured.

Miami airport lacked system to stop speeding jets

Homendy has said the NTSB will look at Miami’s lack of a special system to slow and stop speeding jets at the end of runways. But investigators will examine everything that may have contributed.

About 120 airports in the U.S. have the lightweight, crushable material that the Federal Aviation Administration says has saved around 500 lives.

Even without a runway excursion system, Miami’s airport appears to be compliant with federal rules because it has a 1,000-foot (305-meter) safety buffer at the end of its runways, experts said.

Homendy said her agency’s goal is to prevent tragedies, but runway excursions continue to happen even after the board has suggested installing the systems in the past.

“Our recommendations must be implemented or we’re going to be here again,” she said.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — It’s never been more expensive in the U.S. to fill up the tank and take one last summer trip over the Labor Day weekend.

The average price of regular gas was $4.14 a gallon heading into the holiday, nearly a dollar higher than last year and well above the Labor Day weekend record of $3.82 from 2012, according to AAA motor club.

Nicole Collins planned to head from Philadelphia to South Carolina to visit friends, but she said her family has spent most of the summer close to home and not taking their typical weekend trips because driving has gotten so expensive.

“Gas is pretty high right now. It doesn’t help that we also have a baby, so we also have to pay for that,” Collins said outside a gas station in Claymont, Delaware, where regular gas was $4.199 a gallon.

Prices shot up after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February and have not settled down since. Crude oil traffic through the key Strait of Hormuz has plunged, and Iran has refused to reopen the waterway.

“Everything points to the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz,” said Tom Seng, a professor of energy finance at Texas Christian University.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright offered few specifics on when the nation’s drivers might see relief at the gas pump, acknowledging that prices are higher now than Labor Day 2025.

“Yes, they’re higher today, but we’re doing everything we can to push them down,” Wright said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

The national average for regular gas prices is still well below the record of $5.02 a gallon set in June 2022.

But diesel is a different story: It hit a national average of $5.85 a gallon Friday, a record.

Trucks and other freight delivery systems use a lot of diesel, and that increased transportation cost is being passed on to consumers, whether at the grocery store or through package delivery services.

“It doesn’t really seem like there’s an end to it,” Collins said.

Gas prices typically drop as the summer driving season ends and refineries turn to making a cheaper winter blend.

But Seng said there are other factors this year even beyond the volatile situation in the Middle East that make future prices unpredictable. U.S. refineries are working at 98% capacity, many in the unusually harsh Texas heat. If there are problems there or a hurricane knocks some systems offline, prices will struggle to drop.

And it’s not just a Middle East problem. Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries are squeezing diesel supplies. Chinese refiners are seeing declining outputs as well, said Matthew Metzgar, a clinical professor of economics at UNC Charlotte.

“There’s just less gasoline coming out of those refineries,” Metzgar said.

Wright, the energy secretary, said the Trump administration was taking steps to increase production and that the markets forecast lower prices in the coming months.

“If you look at the futures prices, if you wanted to buy today in bulk gasoline for two months out in November, it’s about $0.35 cheaper than it is today. So the marketplace thinks gasoline prices are going to move meaningfully lower,” he said.

Geopolitically, though, there is little a driver can do to knock down gas prices.

But using price apps can help save a little money, especially on long trips where gas by the interstate could be 10 to 15 cents per gallon more expensive than at stations a short drive down the road, Metzgar said.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Wisconsin’s candidates for governor want to limit them, while Pennsylvania’s say they support a ban. A Michigan congressional candidate called them “un-American.” A Florida Senate candidate is selling merch opposing them.

Across the country and up and down ballots, candidates from both parties are increasingly on the attack over Flock cameras, the AI-powered nationwide network of automated cameras that record license plates and other characteristics of all passing vehicles, allowing law enforcement agencies to search and share that data. Although police say the cameras are an invaluable crime-fighting tool, some critics say their pervasiveness amounts to unconstitutional warrantless mass surveillance.

The cameras sold by Atlanta-based Flock Safety, which the company has said are running in 6,000 communities in every state but Alaska, have become a new campaign issue that candidates and strategists see as part of a backlash against powerful technology companies, connected to broader debates over the future of artificial intelligence and the associated boom in data center construction.

“We’ve seen candidates running on banning them, cutting off funding, or requiring warrants. That’s a credit to activists across the country who have raised concerns about their use,” Michael Soyfer, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm litigating over the technology, said in a statement.

In response to questions about the cameras as a campaign theme, a Flock spokeswoman emphasized the company’s claims about the power of its technology, saying it helped “solve approximately one million crimes and helped reunite roughly 10,000 missing people with their families.”

“We ask anyone weighing in on this issue to engage with the facts and the record: the crimes solved, the families reunited, the safeguards already in place, and what our technology actually does,” said MoMo Zhou, the company’s vice president of communications. “We ask them to work with the communities using this technology to decide what rules should govern it and not to spread misinformation or ban a critical public safety tool outright that is helping to make communities safer.”

Flock opponents cite privacy concerns

License plate reader technology is decades old, and Flock was founded in 2017. But the company has faced a growing backlash this year — one that’s crescendoed in recent weeks. It has come as awareness has grown about the sweeping reach of Flock’s network, litigation has unfolded over constitutional questions related to the use of the cameras, and news media have documented cases of officers misusing the technology to stalk personal connections.

James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, recently declared, “Flock cameras have no place in Texas.” His Republican opponent Ken Paxton’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Josh Shapiro, the Democratic Pennsylvania governor seeking reelection and considered a potential contender for the White House in 2028, said this week he would support a statewide ban. His Republican opponent, Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity, said in a statement, “Flock cameras are an intrusive invasion of privacy and they should be banned.”

In Wisconsin, the issue dominated the governor’s race this week.

Democratic nominee David Crowley, who is taking hits over his past comments in support of making Wisconsin a global AI and data hub, highlighted that he had issued an order limiting the use of Flock cameras in Milwaukee County, where he serves as county executive. He said that as governor he would “implement strict transparency and accountability laws that ensure Wisconsinites are not spied on.”

His Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, said in a statement that he would pause state funding for Flock cameras and create a task force to establish stronger privacy protections, penalties for misuse, limits on data retention and sharing and “safeguards against Communist China and foreign adversaries.”

The Wisconsin Democratic Party responded by posting a clip of Tiffany in April saying in response to a question about Flock cameras that he didn’t know what they were. Then the state Republican Party hit back, saying “Big Brother Crowley” had a long record of previously supporting police surveillance technologies.

The issue has also infiltrated Rhode Island’s gubernatorial race, where Democratic Gov. Dan McKee paused the installation of new cameras just weeks before the state’s Sept. 9 primary, citing privacy and transparency concerns. His primary opponent, former CVS executive Helena Foulkes, has questioned McKee’s motives for stopping the rollout so close to the election but agreed a review of how the data is being used was needed.

In Michigan, self-described democratic socialist William Lawrence, a Democratic nominee for the U.S. House, recently addressed the cameras by calling them “the most un-American thing I can imagine.” A spokesman for his opponent, incumbent Rep. Tom Barrett, noted that Barrett is a co-sponsor of legislation intended to ban federal agencies from using Flock cameras or other surveillance technology and to prevent state and local governments from using federal funds to buy them.

In Florida, where outgoing Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration this week ordered the removal of automated license plate readers from state highway rights-of-way, Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon’s campaign is selling a T-shirt that reads, “FLORIDA NEEDS TO GET THE FLOCK OUT.”

Law enforcement groups support the technology

While calls for bans or restrictions have mounted, other candidates have expressed more supportive or nuanced views, and policing groups have reiterated their strong backing for the company and its tech.

Mitchell Davis III, chief of police in Hazel Crest, Illinois, and the president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said in an interview that technology like Flock’s is “invaluable” and that the conversations around it have become “disturbing.”

“The disturbing thing for me right now is I’m seeing these communities that are telling their police departments that we’re no longer using these (automated license plate readers) in our communities, and that, I believe, that’s a huge mistake. Talk about the proverbial throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” he said. “Instead of focusing on eliminating the cameras, make sure that there’s proper guidelines and proper accountability for misuse of the cameras.”

President Donald Trump said recently at an Oval Office event that his administration was studying the issue and would have more to say soon.

Cayce Myers, an attorney who teaches courses that touch on public relations, political communications and privacy issues at Virginia Tech University, said Americans are increasingly living in a world where they are interfacing with new technologies like Flock cameras whether they want to or not.

“I think there’s a real synergy between the camera systems that we’re talking about and also this greater societal discomfort with AI and technology in general,” he said, adding that it seems obvious that new surveillance technologies will continue to become a major political issue.

For Josh Chavez, Flock cameras are one of his concerns about the intersection of emerging technologies and civil liberties in his stretch of West Texas where data center projects are proliferating. Chavez, an HVAC installer, is outspoken enough on data centers that he was invited to participate in a recent roundtable on the subject with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, who is also a Flock critic.

“This is the government seeking more power, right?” Chavez said of the cameras. “In a partnership with Big Tech, who is seeking more money, all at the expense of us.”