In the moments before an Amazon cargo plane crashed at Miami International Airport on Sunday, automatic warning signals were blaring in the cockpit. One pilot warned the other that the plane was coming in too fast, according to details of the cockpit voice recordings released this week by the National Transportation Safety Board.
But the flight crew pushed ahead with the landing anyway.
"In my 60 years of flying, I've never seen such a terrible performance from a crew," said Ross Aimer, the CEO of Aero Consulting Experts, and a retired airline captain who worked in the industry for more than 40 years.
The plane was traveling roughly 180 miles per hour when it touched down awkwardly on the runway, flight data recordings showed. The pilots tried briefly to take off again before the plane hurtled roughly 1300 feet past the end of the runway and smashed into two vehicles on the ground.
Five people were killed, all of them workers for a company that cleans planes. Five more were injured.
"It was a very, very unstable approach from the beginning, from the get go," Aimer told NPR. In that situation, he says, pilots are trained to go around and attempt the landing again. "These fellows should have gone around long before even getting close to that airport."
The cargo plane crash in Miami is raising concerns about the safety culture at 21 Air, the little-known carrier that operated the flight for Amazon. Former pilots were sounding alarms about the company's safety practices long before Sunday's accident, though the company disputes their claims.
It's also prompting questions about the retail giant's practice of contracting with multiple smaller carriers instead of operating its own fleet of planes.
"The main question would be," Aimer said, "why is it that a major company, a very rich company like Amazon Prime, is contracting their flying to several of what I would call fly by night operations like 21 Air?"
Amazon vigorously disputed that characterization. An Amazon spokesperson says its carrier model is standard practice across the aviation industry, and that it contracts with carriers that are certified by air safety regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration.
"Nothing is more important to us than safety — this includes the safety of the people who operate flights in our network, the safety of the communities around the airports we use, and the safety of the people who handle our cargo," Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement to NPR.
The Miami crash is the third major accident involving a 767 flying for Amazon. In 2019, a flight operated by Atlas Air crashed into Trinity Bay during its approach to Houston, killing the two crew members and one passenger on board. The NTSB found the probable cause was pilot error. (Atlas Air is still a major cargo airline, but no longer operates flights for Amazon.)
In 2024, another Boeing 767 flying for Amazon overran the runway at Vancouver International Airport in Canada. In that case, the Cargojet crew reported mechanical problems with the wing flaps on the plane. No one was injured during the high-speed landing. The plane was damaged, but later repaired and returned to service, Amazon said.
Amazon is not the only shipper to suffer a deadly crash. In November, a UPS cargo jet exploded shortly after takeoff in Louisville, Kentucky, killing all three crew members on board and 12 people on the ground. The NTSB investigation has focused on a faulty part in an engine bracket on the McDonnell Douglas MD-11.
Pilot experience
Amazon currently contracts with nine different air carriers, with more than 100 planes total in service, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. They include major names like Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air and Cargojet, as well as lesser-known carriers like 21 Air that specialize in cargo.
21 Air operates a total of eight planes for Amazon, according to Cirium, including the Boeing 767 involved in the Miami crash. The company, which is headquartered in North Carolina, also flies for DHL.
For pilots, smaller cargo airlines such as 21 Air often serve as "a stepping stone into a bigger and better job," said Aimer, who spent much of his career flying for United Airlines.
"They attract guys that are not that experienced," Aimer said. "And even if they are, they're only looking to get on to a better job, like with UPS, with FedEx."
The crew of the 21 Air flight that crashed in Miami had relatively little experience with the type of plane they were flying. The captain had been certified on the Boeing 767 for less than five months, while the first officer had been certified on the 767 for less than 18 months, according to the NTSB.
21 Air did not reply to NPR's requests for comment. But in a statement to The Wall Street Journal the company said, "Our entire organization has focused on deploying the right training, protocols and procedures in all aspects of operational safety."
The company said it would evaluate the NTSB's findings.
Past safety concerns
Former 21 Air employees raised concerns about the safety culture at the airline long before the Miami crash. Karl Seuring, a veteran pilot and the former president of 21 Air's pilot union, said he was not surprised by that accident.
"We anticipated and we feared it. And we knew the day would come, and there wasn't anything we could do," he said.
Seuring says he was fired in 2022 for raising concerns about the 21 Air's safety standards after being told repeatedly that "it's not going to change," according to the federal whistleblower lawsuit he filed. His lawyer, Mike Anello, shared documents from the case with NPR.
"Everywhere I looked there are issues," wrote Don Helmig, the departing safety director, in an email to the company's owner in 2021, in which he accused the company's leaders of paying "lip service" to safety. "In my opinion, what they wished (are we missing a word here, maybe? Like 'for'? …should this read as wished for me to do.?) me to do is say nothing, but that is not how Safety is supposed to operate."
The company's CEO at the time pushed back on those allegations in his testimony for the lawsuit. He denied that 21 Air discouraged employees from reporting their safety concerns, and said the company follows "all the rules."
The company also had trouble attracting experienced pilots, Seuring said, because it paid them less than other carriers. Seuring says he presented management with a plan to change that.
"If we want to get experienced pilots here, we have to be willing to compensate them," he said. "And then, unfortunately, when that was lower than standard, guys would simply go elsewhere with opportunities that looked more promising."
Amazon says it's aware of reports of the former 21 Air employees' safety concerns.
"We believe the allegations pre-date our relationship with the company and the current leadership team at 21 Air. Nonetheless, we take any allegation related to safety with the utmost seriousness," Nantel said in a statement.
Investigation ongoing
Both 21 Air and Amazon say they are cooperating with the NTSB investigation into the Miami crash.
NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy says investigators are seeking to understand how the two companies work together.
"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? And then we'll see from there we might even have additional information that we seek," Homendy said during a press briefing on Monday.
At a briefing on Tuesday, Homendy said she was not familiar with complaints about the safety culture at 21 Air. But she did encourage the public to share anything that might be "relevant to this investigation."
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