Amazon’s Aging Cargo Fleet Just Cost Five Workers Their Lives on a Miami Runway

A 32-year-old Amazon cargo jet blew through a Miami perimeter road at 130 miles per hour.

Federal investigators are now digging into why an aircraft that old was still hauling freight over American neighborhoods.

What they find could end Amazon's entire cargo contractor system for good.

A Routine Cargo Run That Turned Into a Fireball

Prime Air Flight 7598 left San Juan, Puerto Rico on Sunday and should have landed in Miami without incident.

It didn't.

The Boeing 767 – built in 1994 as a passenger jet and converted to cargo duty in 2015 – came screaming down Runway 30 at Miami International Airport around 2 p.m.

It never stopped.

The jet blew past the end of a 9,000-foot runway, crossed the airport boundary, and tore through a perimeter road used by warehouse workers.

It struck multiple vehicles and erupted into flames, sending thick black smoke pouring into the sky.

Five people on the ground were killed.

Five more were rushed to trauma centers, three of them in critical condition.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue deployed more than 60 units and 200 personnel.

The pilots were trapped inside the cockpit.

Crews battled an active fuel leak for hours after the initial blaze.

The National Transportation Safety Board has launched a go-team investigation.

The Contractor Amazon Doesn't Want You Asking About

Amazon doesn't fly its own planes.

The company brands its freight network as Prime Air, but every aircraft is operated by a contracted carrier flying under its own FAA certificate.

Flight 7598 belonged to 21 Air, a small Greensboro, North Carolina cargo operator running Boeing freighters for Amazon and DHL.

The jet – registered N1997A – started life as a passenger plane three decades ago and became a freighter in 2015.

This is not Amazon's first fatal crash.

In February 2019, another Amazon-contracted jet – Atlas Air Flight 3591 – nose-dived into Trinity Bay near Houston and killed all three people aboard.

That NTSB investigation exposed troubling gaps in pilot training and hiring standards at the contractor.

In January 2026, a different Amazon Air 767 – 33 years old – suffered a hard landing in San Bernardino that tore open its fuselage.

Amazon leases these aircraft to contractors nobody outside the industry has heard of, then issues a condolence statement when something goes wrong.

Duffy Inherited a Broken System and Everyone Knows It

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had ground crews and federal investigators moving within the hour.

Duffy said he'd issued "a full ground stop at Miami International while first responders assess the scene."

That's not new for Duffy.

When Pete Buttigieg tried to pin an earlier crash on Trump-era staffing cuts, Duffy fired back with the numbers.

"Mayor Pete failed for four years to address the air traffic controller shortage," Duffy said.

He's right.

The FAA had 6% fewer controllers in 2025 than a decade earlier, despite a 10% jump in total flights.

Buttigieg had four years to fix that.

Duffy has had a year and a half, and he's already signed bonuses for veteran controllers and boosted Academy pay by 30% to attract new ones.

A system broken over decades doesn't get fixed overnight.

But at least someone's finally trying.

21 Air's Maintenance Files Are About to Become Public Record

The NTSB will spend months pulling apart 21 Air's maintenance logs, crew records, and cockpit data.

Somewhere in those records is the answer to why a 32-year-old jet couldn't stop on more than a mile and a half of runway.

Five families in Miami don't have months to wait.

Amazon has built a delivery empire on contractors flying aircraft older than some of their own pilots.

Sooner or later, that arithmetic catches up.

It just did.

Sources:

• Bonny Chu, "Amazon cargo plane overruns Miami airport runway and strikes 'multiple' vehicles; 5 dead, 5 injured," Fox News, September 6, 2026.
• "Sean Duffy Shreds Pete Buttigieg Over Problems At FAA," The Daily Wire, 2025.
• "U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Unveils New Package to Boost Air Traffic Controller Workforce," Department of Transportation, May 1, 2025.
• "Amazon Air 767 Crash Kills Five; Investor Read-Through Awaits the Cause," ts2.tech, September 7, 2026.
• "21 Air Flight 7598," Wikipedia, September 2026.
• "Atlas Air Flight 3591 Cargo Plane Crash," NTSB, July 14, 2020.
• "Another Wrinkled Fuselage: 33-Year-Old Amazon Air Boeing 767-300F Suffers Hard Landing," Simple Flying, January 2026.