An air traffic controller did not warn the pilots of an Amazon cargo jet about potentially powerful tailwinds as they prepared to land in Miami, despite federal requirements to provide that information, according to a preliminary report released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board. The plane later ran off the runway, killing five people.
Only four minutes before the Amazon jet was cleared to land, the controller had advised another aircraft of southern winds gusting to 25 mph.
However, the controller “did not issue information about the wind” to the Amazon crew, the NTSB said.
Federal aviation rules require controllers to provide both wind direction and speed when approving a runway for use if a tailwind is present, according to the report.
The preliminary findings did not identify what caused the crash. Investigators are expected to continue examining the accident for more than a year before reaching a final conclusion.
The aircraft, which was transporting packages of contact lenses for Amazon, had arrived from Puerto Rico when it landed at Miami International Airport on Sept. 6. It touched down at high speed and traveled about 1,200 feet beyond the runway’s end.
The jet then struck a van carrying employees of an aircraft-cleaning company.
Five people inside the van were killed. Two other occupants suffered serious injuries, along with the driver of a car hit by the plane.
Both pilots sustained minor injuries.
Tailwinds can make landing a plane harder
A number of aviation specialists have said weather conditions appear to have contributed to the accident.
A tailwind can increase an aircraft’s landing speed, making it more difficult to brake and raising the risk that the plane will overshoot the intended touchdown area.
“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,” said Tony Mello, a former Federal Aviation Administration official who supervised air traffic control operations in the central United States.
A landing in gusty tailwind conditions demands “more concentration on the part of the pilot,” but it can still be completed safely, said John Goglia, a former NTSB member.
Goglia described the missing wind advisory as “a significant omission,” while emphasizing that it would not alone explain the crash. “Every crash is a chain of events. That’s just one event,” he said.
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The plane had little runway left when it touched down
A previously released NTSB summary of the cockpit voice recordings said one pilot repeatedly told the other that the plane was approaching too quickly, both before landing and after touchdown.
The other pilot, however, never provided “a consistent verbal response” to those warnings, the agency said.
The pilots had first flown together earlier that same day, according to the NTSB’s preliminary report.
Recordings from the cockpit also captured multiple automated alerts warning about the aircraft’s descent rate and nearby terrain.
By the time the plane touched down, it was traveling at 184 mph and had already passed roughly three-quarters of a mile from the beginning of the runway, the report said.
Investigators said the pilots may have waited too long before attempting to abandon the landing.
Data from the plane show its wheel brakes were applied, then released as the engines throttled to “go-around” thrust values before the brakes again were applied with about 415 feet of runway remaining.
The plane ran off the pavement while still traveling at 130 mph, then struck some airport equipment and the cleaning crew’s van before crashing through a perimeter fence, hitting a car on a public road and coming to rest with its nose in a parking lot fence, the preliminary report said.
Plane’s operator says it is focused on safety
After the crash, Amazon suspended its partnership with 21 Air, which operated the plane. The North Carolina carrier had flown packages for Amazon since 2024.
The Boeing 767 that crashed was 32 years old and originally built to carry passengers. It was converted to a cargo plane in June 2016, the preliminary NTSB report said.
The plane’s operator, 21 Air, said in a written statement Thursday that safety is “a core focus” of its organization.
“We are reviewing the information in the NTSB preliminary report closely, alongside our own internal safety and operational protocols, and we will take all appropriate action to improve our safety based on the facts as they are established,” the company said.
The Miami crash came less than a year after a UPS cargo plane crashed at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport after losing its engine while accelerating down the runway.
That crash killed all three pilots and 12 people on the ground. Twenty-three more were injured.
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