[1][2] ValuJet, a low-cost carrier, already had a poor safety record before the crash, and the accident brought widespread attention to the airline's problems.

[3] In 1986, an American Trans Air McDonnell Douglas DC-10 being serviced at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was destroyed on the ground by a fire caused by chemical oxygen generators.

[5][6] After Flight 132, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended to the FAA that all class D cargo holds be fitted with smoke detectors and fire-suppression systems.

[2] The aircraft had suffered a series of incidents in the two years before the crash, including two aborted takeoffs and eight emergency landings.

At the same time, the pilots heard a loud bang in their headsets and noticed that the plane was losing electrical power.

The sag in electrical power and the banging sound were eventually determined to be the result of an explosion of a tire in the cargo hold.

Although ValuJet's flight-attendant training manual stated that the cockpit door should not be opened when smoke or other harmful gases might be present in the cabin, the intercom was not functional and there was no other way to alert the pilots.

Examination of debris suggested that the fire had burned through the floorboards in the cabin, resulting in structural failure and damage to cables underneath the instrument panels.

The NTSB report on the accident stated that "the Safety Board cannot rule out the possibility that the flightcrew was incapacitated by smoke or heat in the cockpit during the last 7 seconds of the flight.

Because of the adverse conditions, performing toxicology tests on the human remains to determine their exposure to fumes and smoke from the in-flight fire was not possible.

[13] At the end of a 15-month investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the fire had developed in a cargo compartment below the passenger cabin.

The NTSB determined that just before takeoff, 144[14] expired chemical oxygen generators, each slightly larger than the size of a tennis-ball can, had been placed in the cargo compartment in five boxes marked COMAT (company material) by ValuJet's maintenance contractor SabreTech.

This violated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations forbidding the transport of hazardous materials in passenger-aircraft cargo holds.

[a] Failure to cover the generators' firing pins with the prescribed plastic caps made accidental activation much more likely.

SabreTech employees indicated on the cargo manifest that the "oxy canisters", which were loosely packed in boxes that were each sealed with tape and bubble wrap, were "empty."

ValuJet workers then loaded the boxes in the cargo hold in the mistaken belief that the devices were simply empty canisters that would be safe and legal to transport on a passenger aircraft.

The NTSB concluded that the aircraft was under positive control by the pilots until the time of the sharp right turn and dive immediately prior to impact.

[1] Smoke detectors in the cargo holds can alert the flight crew of a fire long before the problem becomes apparent in the cabin, and a fire-suppression system buys valuable time to land the plane safely.

SabreTech's maintenance supervisor Daniel Gonzalez and two mechanics who worked on the plane, Eugene Florence and Mauro Ociel Valenzuela-Reyes, were charged with conspiracy and making false statements.

It found that at the time, federal law did not support criminal penalties for reckless violations of hazmat regulations.

However, the 11th Circuit did allow the conviction for improper training to stand, and remanded that count to a lower court for resentencing.

AirTran made little mention of its past as ValuJet, though it did not make any major announcements on the crash's 10th anniversary out of respect for the victims.

The memorial, consisting of 110 concrete pillars, is located just north of Tamiami Trail, about 12 miles west of Krome Avenue in Miami-Dade County.

[29] In a June 4, 2013 Miami Herald article, a local resident stated that while slogging through the sawgrass several months earlier, he had found a partially melted gold pendant in the same area.