The widow of one of the five men killed over Labor Day weekend when an Amazon cargo plane overshot the runway at Miami International Airport filed a wrongful-death lawsuit on Wednesday.
Yaraisi Santiso Morejon, whose 53-year-old husband, Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, was driving a van struck by the plane on Sunday afternoon, listed a number of defendants in the suit, including Amazon, Amazon Air Cargo, 21 Air LLC and the two pilots of the Boeing 767.
The crash killed Naranjo and four others who were part of a contracted cleaning crew.
“This disaster was not an unavoidable accident,” reads the complaint, filed Wednesday in a Florida circuit court. “It was the foreseeable and preventable result of multiple, concurrent failures.”
Among those failures, the lawsuit alleges, was “pilot error” and a “systemic failure” by Amazon and 21 Air, which operated the plane, to ensure adequate pilot training, as well as deploying “a 32-year-old aircraft … whose braking, thrust reverser, and spoiler systems are under active NTSB investigation.”
The pilots of the Amazon-branded cargo plane appeared to briefly consider aborting their landing attempt, according to initial flight data released by federal investigators Tuesday night.
Instead, the plane plowed 1,300 feet off the end of the runway and across two roads, slamming into the white Ford Econoline van, which was carrying Naranjo and fellow members of the cleaning crew, as well as an SUV.
An Amazon spokeswoman said Sunday that the company was working closely with local authorities and officials, and intended to cooperate fully with any investigation. (Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The lawsuit came a day after the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office released the names of the five victims killed in the crash, all of whom were in the van. Wednesday’s filing says the family is seeking damages “in excess of $50,000.”
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