Amazon’s Outsourced 767 Left Five Cleaners in Its Path

A 21 Air Boeing 767 flying for Amazon overran Miami’s Runway 30 on Sept. 6, killing five plane-cleaning workers in a van. The jet, inbound from San Juan as Flight 7598, ran about 1,300 feet past the pavement, hit the van, went through a fence, and struck a car on NW 67th Avenue.

The two pilots walked away. The National Transportation Safety Board is now asking a question the Prime Air titles on the fuselage do not answer: who, in the contract, actually owns the flying.

The Cleaning Van Was on Its Way Off the Field

The dead were not on the airplane. They worked for Professional Ocean Service Corp., a contractor that cleans cabins and washes exteriors at Miami International Airport, and they were wrapping up an eight-hour shift when the 767 came off the end of Runway 30.

Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz identified the five men killed inside a 2012 Ford Econoline that had seven people aboard. Yoel Rodríguez Naranjo, 53, was driving. He had come from Cuba in 2011 and was on a 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift. His wife, Yaraisi Santiso Morejon, texted him when he did not come home; the messages stayed unread, and she later filed a wrongful-death suit naming Amazon, 21 Air, and the pilots.

Julio C. Pineda, 75, was known in his building as El Mago. Neighbors said he picked up extra hours that Sunday, a part-time return after another job, and still did magic tricks for children on his way in. Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53, is survived by his husband, Nelson Fernandez, who said the Friday after the crash would have been Fajardo’s 54th birthday. Rolando Alemán León, 55, and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47, completed the crew. All five had ties to Cuba.

THE FIVE MEN IN THE VAN

• Yoel Rodríguez Naranjo, 53: The driver, a 2011 arrival from Cuba, working the early shift for his wife and a 22-year-old son.
• Julio C. Pineda, 75: A part-timer nicknamed El Mago who took extra hours on Sept. 6 and never made a furniture-moving stop he had promised a neighbor.
• Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53: Remembered by his husband as the man who played music in the yard before he mowed, and who sent money to parents in Cuba.
• Rolando Alemán León, 55: Called Roli, a former hotel janitor who had told a landlady he was buying a house with his girlfriend.
• Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47: Survived by a daughter in Cuba; his brother hired counsel with Fajardo’s partner.

Two other cleaners in the van, Ridoel Averhoff Diaz, 32, and Roosevelt Sebastian Perdomo Torres, 36, were hurt, Diaz critically. Eugenio Corredor, 79, was in a Toyota Corolla Cross on the public road and was also listed as critical as of Sept. 8. Captain Joseph Carroll, 55, and First Officer Jaime Felipe Silva Molina, 37, were treated and released. Professional Ocean Service said its people were family and that it was heartbroken.

They were the last layer in a stack of contractors. Amazon hired 21 Air. The airport hired a cleaning firm. The men in the van had no headset in that cockpit and no clause in that cargo deal.

What the Recorders Show in the Last Minute

Investigators recovered an Acron Aviation FA2100 cockpit voice recorder and an Ontic flight data recorder and read both in Washington. The NTSB’s preliminary cockpit and flight-data readout is not a cause finding, and the two boxes have not been precisely synchronized, but the last minutes are blunt.

About a minute and 42 seconds before the voice recording ends, one pilot called for flaps 20 and the other cautioned they were too fast. That second pilot kept talking about speed. The board wrote that there was not a consistent verbal response. Autopilot disconnected. At a thousand feet the jet started calling sink rate. After minimums it called “too low terrain” four times. A pilot asked for flaps 30 about a second before a forty-foot callout, which is landing configuration at a height where a 767 is already committed unless someone goes around.

Sounds like a touchdown hit the voice recorder at 31 seconds to the end. A go-around was called at 15 seconds. Sounds like departing the paved surface hit at 10 seconds. Ross Aimer, CEO of Aero Consulting Experts and a retired airline captain, said he had not seen such a performance in 60 years of flying, and that the crew should have gone around long before they got close to the field.

THE LAST 30 SECONDS ON THE FLIGHT RECORDER

The nose and right gear met the runway at 158 knots, about 182 mph, and the left main gear stayed off for another 11 seconds. Investigator-in-charge Chihoon Shin said the recorded data showed no indication that speed brakes or thrust reversers deployed. Go-around thrust lasted about four seconds, then idle. Chair Jennifer Homendy declined to say what that sequence means until a performance study is done. The voice recorder holds more than two hours of good audio; the data recorder holds about 54 hours and more than 400 parameters.

Carroll had been typed on the 767 for less than five months. Silva Molina had been typed on it for less than 18 months. It was the airplane’s third sector of the day, Cincinnati to Miami, Miami to San Juan, and back. The NTSB interviewed the pilots on Sept. 9 and still has not said who was flying.

Amazon Does Not Fly the Planes That Carry Its Name

Prime Air titles were on the 32-year-old Boeing 767-33A, registered N1997A and built in 1994. The legal operator was 21 Air LLC, a Greensboro, N.C., cargo airline with a Miami hub, flying the trip as a Part 121 cargo flight. Amazon is the customer.

Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, puts Amazon’s present network at nine carriers and more than 100 airplanes. 21 Air flies eight of those 767s. Air Transport International, under Air Transport Services Group, has the largest slice, with 40. Over a decade Amazon has used at least 13 cargo airlines, a longer tally than the nine now on the line. 21 Air also flies for DHL. Houston Astros owner Jim Crane took a majority stake in 2021; the Amazon flying began in 2024, with jets Amazon controls and 21 Air operates.

AMAZON’S CONTRACT CARGO NETWORK

• Nine carriers now: Cirium counts more than 100 airplanes on Amazon work, with names that run from Alaska Airlines and Allegiant Air to specialists such as 21 Air.
• Eight 767s at 21 Air: A small slice beside Air Transport International’s 40, and a company that also keeps 757s and 767s on DHL paper.
• A 2024 start: Amazon says the older staff complaints predate its deal and the current 21 Air leadership, and that it uses FAA-certified carriers, which is how wet-lease cargo is usually built.
• The brand on the tail: Families have already sued Amazon as well as 21 Air and the pilots, treating the name customers know as a party to the flying.

Kelly Nantel, speaking for Amazon, said nothing is more important than safety, including people who operate the flights, communities around the airports, and people who handle the cargo. She said the contractor model is standard, that Amazon is cooperating, and that leaders have been meeting local officials. Aimer asked why a rich company would farm the flying to what he called fly-by-night operations like 21 Air. Amazon rejected that description. Both things can sit in the same file: the model is ordinary, and ordinary still left Homendy reading a vendor contract.

21 Air’s Own Safety Staff Sounded Alarms Years Earlier

Karl Seuring, a former Delta captain who became president of 21 Air’s pilot union, filed a Department of Labor whistleblower case after he was fired in July 2022, about six months after he joined. He told investigators after the crash that he was not surprised. He said they had anticipated it and feared it, and that there was nothing they could do. In a later interview he called the operation a freight train they could not stop.

His complaint, which is still before the Labor Department, alleged short rest, a checklist so long it got in the way, weak cockpit resource management, and a culture that punished people who spoke up. Bruce Joseph, a former chief pilot, testified in that case that he had personal knowledge of people being discouraged from writing safety reports. 21 Air’s then-CEO denied that the company blocked reports and said it follows the rules.

After three months, everywhere I looked there are issues. In my opinion, what they wished me to do is say nothing, but that is not how Safety is supposed to operate.

Don Helmig, departing 21 Air safety director, email to owner Jim Crane, June 12, 2021

Helmig, a retired airline and military pilot, accused leaders of paying lip service to the FAA-required safety management system. Seuring said pay lagged other carriers, so experienced pilots left. 21 Air, in a statement after the crash, said safety has been core since the 2021 acquisition, that the company has focused on training and procedures, and that it will evaluate the NTSB’s findings. CEO Keith Winters posted a short letter of condolence and said the airline is cooperating with the NTSB, the FAA, and local authorities. Nantel said Amazon takes any safety allegation seriously and believes these claims predate its relationship and the current leadership team.

Homendy said at first that she was not familiar with the 21 Air complaints, then invited anyone with something relevant to come forward. That invitation is how a labor file from 2022 enters a 2026 cockpit investigation without anyone having to prove it caused the approach.

A Houston Dive and a Vancouver Overrun

Miami is the third serious 767 event on Amazon paper in seven years, and the three files do not share a cause. On Feb. 23, 2019, Atlas Air Flight 3591, a 767 flying for Amazon.com Services LLC from Miami toward Houston, dived into Trinity Bay. Three people died. The board’s probable cause in the 2019 Trinity Bay crash was the first officer’s response to an inadvertent go-around mode, spatial disorientation, and a nose-down dive, with the captain’s monitoring and industry hiring practices listed as contributing. Atlas still flies cargo. It no longer flies for Amazon.

On Nov. 19, 2024, a Cargojet 767 on Amazon work overran at Vancouver after the crew told the tower they had a flap problem and would land fast. They crossed the threshold at 173 knots, left the pavement, and stopped about a third of a mile beyond, nose gear collapsed. No one was hurt. Amazon said the jet was repaired and returned.

Amazon is not the only shipper with a recent body count. On Nov. 4, 2025, a UPS MD-11 lost its left engine and pylon on takeoff at Louisville. The three crew members and 12 people on the ground died, 15 in all, and investigators have focused on fatigue in a pylon mount, not on a vendor. UPS flies its own metal. The contrast is the point Homendy is circling: a mechanical failure on an in-house fleet and an unstable approach on a contracted 767 both killed people who were not in the cockpit, and only one of those models leaves the board asking what the customer’s contract required.

Homendy Is Reading the Contract as a Safety File

At Miami she said the flying was an Amazon cargo operation contracted to 21 Air, and that investigators would want to see who does what, and what safety provisions sit in the contracts or policies. She later asked whether Amazon takes a hands-off approach and whether it evaluates the operators, and said the board did not know. Those are not probable-cause statements. They are the second question after the recorders, and they travel past 21 Air to every retailer that buys lift by the hour.

This is an Amazon operation for transporting cargo, but it’s actually contracted to 21 Air. We’re going to want to see what that relationship is. Who does what? What safety provisions might be in any sort of contracts or any sort of policies?

Jennifer Homendy, Chair, National Transportation Safety Board, Miami briefing

She also put the airport itself in the docket. Runway 30 has no engineered materials arresting system, the crushable beds that stop most overruns at 70 knots, about 80 mph. The FAA credits those beds with stopping 26 airplanes. Miami International said Runway 12/30 already has the full 1,000-foot runway safety area the FAA mandates, and that no U.S. airport puts EMAS on a runway end that already has that full, open pad, because EMAS is the substitute when land runs out, not a second layer. Homendy asked whether EMAS should be everywhere. A former NTSB investigator, Scott Dunham, said a jet leaving the pavement this fast might have been beyond what those beds are built to catch. The 767’s last recorded speed on the pavement side of the story was still well above 70 knots when the go-around was abandoned.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The approach: One pilot warned about speed for more than a minute, GPWS called sink rate and too low terrain, and the crew continued to a 158-knot, one-gear-first touchdown.
• The ground: Five Professional Ocean Service workers died in the van; five other people were injured; both pilots survived.
• The paper: 21 Air held the operating certificate; Amazon held the customer contract; Homendy has asked for that contract’s safety clauses.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Cause: The NTSB has not said why the crew stayed on the approach, why go-around thrust was brought back to idle, or why speed brakes and reversers do not appear in the recorded data.
• Who was flying: Interviews happened; the public file does not yet name the pilot flying or quote the crew.
• Whether EMAS or the Amazon deal would have changed Sept. 6: Both are in the investigation; neither is a finding.

A CVR group still has to cut a full transcript. A preliminary report is weeks away, and a probable-cause report is much later. In the meantime the lawsuits treat Amazon as if it were the airline, 21 Air’s public site is a condolence note, and five men who washed cabins are the entire death toll. The recorders already describe the last minute. The new work is the paperwork that put that 767, on that contract, over that van.