A federal preliminary report says the pilots of an Amazon cargo plane that crashed in Miami, Florida last month were not warned about the wind affecting the area. According to the report, published Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an air traffic controller did not tell the pilots about possible strong tailwinds during their landing, even though regulations require it.
The plane ran off the runway, and the crash killed five people. Four minutes before clearing the aircraft to land, the controller had issued a wind advisory to another flight, noting gusts of up to 25 mph (40 km/h) from the south, but gave the Amazon pilots no wind information. Federal regulations make it mandatory to state both wind direction and speed when clearing a runway where a tailwind component exists, the NTSB said.
The aircraft, carrying contact-lens packages for Amazon, arrived at high speed after a flight from Puerto Rico and traveled about 1,200 feet (366 meters) past the end of the runway at Miami International Airport on September 6. It struck a van carrying workers for an aircraft-cleaning company; five occupants died and two others were seriously injured, as was the driver of a car the plane hit.
Both pilots suffered minor injuries. Earlier NTSB cockpit-recording summaries said one pilot repeatedly warned the other they were going too fast during approach and after touchdown, but the other never gave a coherent verbal response. The two were flying together for the first time that day, and automated alerts about descent rate and terrain proximity were also recorded.