Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 210; Flight Crew Total 15000; Flight Crew Type 1050
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Human Factors; Procedure
Tailwind operations at airports around the country are out of control. They have become the norm not the exception; almost ubiquitous. DCA is one of the most flagrant violators; constantly ignoring tailwind ops either because they are too lazy to turn the airport around or the forecast has winds clocking around 6 hours in the future. Places like DCA and LGA have very little margin for error as it is; tailwinds only exacerbate the problem. My last 3-day; over 50% of my takeoff and landings were in tailwind conditions. That is not a statistical outlier. I can't remember a trip where I did not experience a tailwind [landing]. What's worse is the severity of the tailwind that controllers will allow; not just 1 or 2 knots; but 7; 8; 9 knot tailwinds are not unusual. Whether it's a function of controllers being lazy or overwhelmed and under confident in their ability to rapidly and safely reconfigure matters not. What does matter is in the past few years airports around the country are operating with tailwinds far too often. There is an accident coming; people will die. The tailwind will be at minimum a contributing factor; probably causal. This lax attitude toward tailwind ops must stop now!
Air carrier Captain has noticed a trend of tower controllers continued use of operations in tailwind conditions.