Widow sues Amazon after cargo plane crash kills husband in Miami

Yoel Rodrigues Naranjo was driving a van full of cleaning crew workers across the tarmac at Miami International Airport on a Sunday when a Boeing 767 cargo plane, its landing gear already deployed too late and its speed still climbing, struck the vehicle. He was killed in the impact. Five people died that day. Another five were injured, two of them critically. Now his widow, Yaraisi Santiso Morejon, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Amazon, the plane's operators, and its two pilots, seeking at least $50,000 in damages and arguing that the crash was not an accident but the result of a cascade of failures.

The aircraft had arrived from San Juan, Puerto Rico, carrying Amazon Prime Air cargo. As it approached Miami's runway, one pilot began warning the other repeatedly—for nearly two minutes—that the plane was traveling too fast. The warnings continued after the wheels touched down. According to a summary of cockpit voice recordings released by the National Transportation Safety Board, there was no consistent verbal response to these alerts. The plane was already halfway down the 2,853-meter runway when its landing gear finally made contact with the pavement, leaving far less distance than needed to decelerate safely. Strong winds associated with approaching storms may have added a tailwind that pushed the aircraft's ground speed even higher.

What happened next revealed a deeper breakdown. After touching down, the pilots briefly disengaged the brakes and increased the throttles, apparently attempting to take off again and circle back for another landing attempt. They abandoned that maneuver after four seconds. The cockpit recordings captured a series of automated warnings about the aircraft's rate of descent and its proximity to terrain—signals that the approach had been unstable and the aircraft may not have been properly configured for landing. Mike O'Donnell, a former Federal Aviation Administration official who previously oversaw airport safety and crash investigations, said the crew had multiple options available when the first speed warning was issued. "You have plenty of time to slow down, plenty of time to say 'let's just do a go-around' at two minutes out," he said.

The aircraft itself carried its own history. The 32-year-old Boeing 767 had originally been built as a passenger plane and flew for several international airlines for more than two decades before being converted into a freighter in 2015. The flight was operated by 21 Air, a North Carolina-based cargo carrier that has transported packages for Amazon since 2024. The NTSB is now examining the aircraft's maintenance records, its operational history, and the carrier's procedures as part of its ongoing investigation.

Aviation safety experts have focused on what the data reveals about coordination in the cockpit. Steve Arroyo, a former airline pilot and safety consultant, pointed to the absence of clear leadership and teamwork. "Where's the coordination? Where's the leadership here in terms of managing the flight deck? And following the trained guidelines set forth in the company's flight manual?" he asked. Mary Schiavo, a former inspector-general of the Department of Transportation, suggested investigators would likely examine the relative seniority of the two pilots and whether that dynamic affected how the junior pilot communicated concerns to the captain.

The crash marks the second fatal cargo jet accident in the United States in less than a year. In October, a UPS aircraft lost an engine while accelerating down the runway at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, killing all three pilots aboard and twelve people on the ground, with another twenty-three injured. As the NTSB continues its investigation into the Miami crash—examining weather conditions, maintenance records, and 21 Air's operational standards—the lawsuit filed by Naranjo's widow reflects a growing demand for accountability. The NTSB has not yet reached conclusions about what caused the disaster.