It could have been horrifying, but, thankfully, it wasn't.
A piece of a cargo plane flying into Miami International Airport broke off and fell with a booming crash, landing in a mall parking lot Friday -- without hurting anyone or hitting anything.
The roughly 18-foot, 150-pound hunk of fiberglass ended up in an empty section of the parking lot near Dillard's at Miami International Mall, 1455 NW 107th Ave. in Doral
The piece fell from an Atlas Air Cargo 747 that had taken off in Santiago, Chile, and landed safely at MIA shortly after dropping the part at 11:30 a.m.
People at the mall didn't know what fell from the sky.
``There was a loud thunder and it looked like something that blew off a truck or something,'' said Jorge Tadeo, who had just grabbed coffee at the La Carreta restaurant in the mall and was sitting in a car in the parking lot when the piece fell.
It's unusual for airplane parts to fall from above, said Greg Feich, a former senior investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
``It is rare,'' he said. ``But it does happen.''
No one was injured in 2004 after part of a wing of a Federal Express jumbo jet came off and fell into the parking lot of a North Fort Worth, Texas, apartment complex. The plane had taken off from Fort Lauderdale.
In 1990, authorities blamed a chunk of ice from a leaking lavatory for flying into -- and knocking off -- an engine of a Northwest Airlines jet that had taken off from Miami. The plane landed safely in Tampa.
What fell from the Atlas freighter Friday was a piece called a fairing, which covers the mechanism that controls the flaps on the wings.
The fairing ``dislodged'' from the aircraft, a spokesman for Atlas said in a written statement.
``They're probably the least robust part of any airplane,'' said Feich, the former NTSB investigator who is now an international air safety consultant. ``The fairings typically take a lot of abuse because they're made of lighter material.''
It's too early to know what caused the fairing to fall. The break could have been caused by a maintenance oversight, but the part could also have fractured in flight, said Feich, who is not investigating the incident.
The Federal Aviation Administration will examine the fairing -- taken to an Atlas facility in Miami -- and the airplane, and determine if similar problems have been reported with other aircraft, agency spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.
Atlas, which is owned by Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings based in Purchase, N.Y., is also reviewing the incident.
``Atlas is grateful that no one was injured and is investigating the matter further,'' the company's statement says.
In 2008, Atlas paid $95,000 to settle an FAA complaint that said a crack in an engine exhaust nozzle on a 747 had been improperly repaired by an unqualified employee in 2006.
By settling the matter, Atlas did not admit or deny violating FAA aircraft maintenance rules.
The falling airplane part on Friday could have caused significant damage, according to Feich. ``When it's that big . . . if it hits a house or goes through the roof or hits somebody in a parking lot, it is a serious event,'' he said.
At the mall, Doral Police Chief Ricardo Gomez was grateful that the part did not fall at a busier shopping time.
``We got lucky today,'' he said. ``If this had been on a weekend, this would have been a real problem.''
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