Pilots of deadly Miami plane crash weren’t warned of tailwinds, report says

Air traffic controllers failed to warn pilots operating an Amazon cargo flight that crashed in Miami last month of potentially strong tailwinds before it careened off the runway, killing five people, according to a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) preliminary report.

Four minutes before the Amazon plane was cleared to land, an air traffic controller provided a wind advisory to a different flight, warning its pilots of gusts of up to 25 mph (40 kph) from the south. But, according to the report, the controller “did not issue information about the wind” to the pilots of the Amazon cargo plane.

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Air traffic controllers are required to state both wind direction and velocity when authorizing the use of a runway when a tailwind exists, federal regulations say.

The report does not state a cause of the crash, which could take a year to determine, the Associated Press reported.

Preliminary evidence released by the safety board last month suggested the plane’s two pilots attempted to abort the landing at the last minute, but that more in-depth discussions with the two men, who suffered minor injuries in the incident, were needed to understand how the crash occurred.

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The plane was transporting packages of contact lenses for Amazon and left Puerto Rico several hours before it barreled approximately 1,200 feet (366 meters) past the end of the runway at Miami International Airport on Sept. 6.

It slammed into a van carrying airplane cleaning staff, killing five people inside.

Two others in the van were seriously injured. A driver of a car that was hit by the plane also sustained serious injuries.

Tailwinds can complicate a landing because they make it harder for an aircraft to slow down and can push it past an ideal landing position, Tony Mello, a former Federal Aviation Administration official who oversaw air traffic control services in the central U.S., told the Associated Press.

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“When you’ve got winds like that, it is your responsibility as a controller to issue that to a pilot, especially on landing and especially when you have gusts,” he said.

While landing with a gusting tailwind “requires more concentration on the part of the pilot” and poses additional challenges, it is not impossible, former NTSB member John Goglia told the U.S. news agency.

Failing to share the wind conditions “was a significant omission but, in and of itself, would not have caused a crash,” he said.

“Every crash is a chain of events. That’s just one event.”

According to an earlier preliminary report from the NTSB, one of the pilots warned of “excessive speed” on several occasions as the aircraft made its landing approach.

The two pilots had flown together for the first time just earlier that day, the report added.

The captain is 55 and has 7,145 hours of flight time. The first officer is 37 and has 2,655 hours, the NTSB said.

Amazon suspended its partnership with the flight operator, 21 Air, after the crash, saying that the “safety has always been our top priority, whether in our own operations or when we’re working with partners.”

21 Air’s CEO Keith Winters said in a statement shortly after the crash that the company’s immediate priorities were “supporting those affected, assisting the appropriate authorities, and ensuring that accurate and verified information is communicated as it becomes available.”

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The Miami-Dade sheriff identified the deceased as Rolando Aleman Leon, 55; Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53; Julio C. Pineda, 75; Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53; and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47.