Does Amazon Have A Corporate Crisis Over The Prime Air Crash?

An NPR story on last weekend's crash of an Amazon Prime cargo flight in Miami carries this:

"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.

. . . "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.

I asked the AI oracle, "Is Amazon acting as if it has a corporate crisis over the Miami Prime crash?" It answered,

Amazon is not publicly treating the Miami Prime Air crash as an internal corporate crisis, opting instead for a standard defensive posture that relies heavily on its outsourced operational model. Following the September 6, 2026, fatal overrun at Miami International Airport that killed five people, Amazon's public strategy has focused on legal and operational insulation rather than treating the disaster as a systemic internal failure.

I'm not sure if AI understands what a corporate crisis is in this context, which is surprising. Corporate crises have a range of causes, not limited to internal factors as the reply suggests. For instance,

Negative publicity due to issues such as scandals, unethical practices, or product failures. For example, social media backlash, bad press, or public outrage over company actions, such as environmental damage or employee mistreatment.

. . . A significant product failure or safety issue that necessitates a product recall, leading to financial loss and reputational damage. This can happen in industries like automotive, food, or consumer goods.

The potential problem for Amazon, as the NPR link suggests, is that it contracted with 21 Air, which apparently has a very poor reputation in the airline industry, for that flight. So far, Amazon's response has been to point the finger at 21 Air and distance itself from the problem:

The cargo plane that careened off a runway on Sunday in Miami, killing five people and injuring five others, was emblazoned with Amazon’s Prime Air logo. But the e-commerce giant wasn’t operating the flight.

While Amazon is cooperating with aviation safety investigators working to determine what led the plane to overrun the runway, crashing through fences and into vehicles, the company made it clear in several statements that the cargo airline, 21 Air, was in charge of the flight.

. . . Joseph Schwieterman, a professor at DePaul University who has studied Amazon Air, said it’s Amazon’s “standard business practice” to contract services as much as possible.

. . . “It allows them to shop for the best deal … also, it hedges their bets,” Schwieterman said. “The downside is that you’re at the whims of your contracts and you can suddenly lose capacity if they jump ship.”

Another downside, to which Prof Schwieterman appears to be entirely oblivious, is that Amazon's Prime brand is written in big letters on the side of a crashed cargo jet. How does Amazon distance itself from that? Clearly it allowed 21 Air to use the Amezon brand, but now it's trying to say it wasn't involved. In the past, airlines have been eager to send PR teams with sray paint cans to blank out their brands from wreckage at the sites of crashes -- not Amazon!

This leaves aside legal liability:

The widow of the driver of the van struck by an Amazon cargo plane at Miami International Airport has filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging negligence against several companies and the pilots. Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53, was driving a van on Sunday for the cleaning company he worked for when the Boeing 767 ran off the runway and struck his vehicle and another one, killing him and four others.

Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53, was driving a van on Sunday for the cleaning company he worked for when the Boeing 767 ran off the runway and struck his vehicle and another one, killing him and four others.

. . . The lawsuit, filed Wednesday morning in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, lists the defendants as Amazon.com Inc.; Amazon Air Cargo; 21 Air; Avia Acquisition; Avia Investments; Andromeda Leasing II; Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc.; Titan Aviation Leasing Limited; Joseph Carroll and Jamie Felipe Silva Molina.

. . . The suit alleges pilot error but also “a systemic failure by defendants Amazon and 21 Air to ensure adequate pilot training, fitness, and sound aeronautical decision-making.”

This will be only the first of numerous lawsuits from the families of the other four victims who were killed, from these who were injured, from those whose property was destroyed, and so forth. Amazon will have a potential problem if it tries to claim it wasn't responsible for contracting with 21 Air if it had its brand painted on 21 Air's planes.

Someonke needs to have a serious talk with Jeff Bezos, who strikes me as the least impressive of the current prominent billionaires.