The DC-8-61F heading to Santo Domingo, lost control immediately after takeoff. The nose quickly plunged into a stall, recovered for a short time, but then went into another stall, collided with the ground and slipped.[ 4]: 3

Another corner of the accident.Flight 101 missed the automatic transport loading and unloading facility at the southern end of the Miami City Railway Yard just north of the runway end, and also the busy cargo operations facilities along the very busy NW 25 transit to the airport's cargo area just south of the runway end. The plane almost missed two factories, a commercial building and the Budweiser Distribution Center in the uninsolidated Miami-Dade County, Florida, between the densely populated suburbs of Miami Springs and Doral. It slides through a wide open field and onto NW 72nd Ave, a road that is usually crowded with traffic during lunchtime and was full at the time of the accident, although Flight 101 crashed into a red light at both intersections. The wreckage quickly skidded across the street and into the parking lot of a small commercial center across the street from a vacant field; it crashed into 26 cars in the parking lot. A big fire broke out after that. At that time, the mini shopping mall was a center of South American commercial computer component distributors.[ 4]

The wreckage of the plane fell four feet from the entrance of three stores. It missed two occupied vehicles and a truck waiting for traffic signals at the intersection of NW 31st Street and NW 72nd Avenue, less than 30 yards (90 ft; 27 m) away. Inside one of the cars in the parking lot is a 34-year-old man named Renato Alvarez who has just returned to his store in a small shopping mall after choosing lunch for his wife and himself. He couldn't get out of the car and was caught in a fireball that engulfed the multi-lane avenue, fields and parking lots.[ 4][8]