Brazil’s Air Safety
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the passengers and crew of Tuesday’s TAM Airlines (Brazil’s largest airline) crash at Sao Paulo’s Congonhas airport. Flight JJ3054 was arriving from Porto Alegre in southern Brazil during driving rains. The A320 slammed into a gas station and a TAM Airlines building after narrowly clearing the airport’s perimeter fence and rush–hour traffic on a surrounding highway in South America’s biggest city. Tam Airlines said that of the 186 people on board, 18 were TAM employees, six were crew members and 162 were passengers. Three people on the ground also died and another 11 were hospitalized.
Sao Paulo’s Congonhas airport is notorious for having short, slippery runways. They were recently resurfaced, but the cutting of grooves to channel rainwater off the pavement had not been completed. International air safety experts have long warned of the danger of just such an accident at Congonhas, especially in heavy rain. On Monday, just the day before, two other planes skidded off the runway’s end. And on March 22nd, another aircraft skidded stopping just short of a steep drop-off to the adjacent highway.
Landing on the 6,362 foot-long runway at Congonhas is so challenging that pilots liken it to an aircraft carrier – if they don’t touch down precisely within the first 1,000 feet, they’re warned to pull up and circle around again. New York’s mid-city LaGuardia Airport, by contrast, has a 7,003-foot runway which is “crowned and grooved” to facilitate braking action.
The ungrooved runway becomes even more-treacherous in the rain when it turns into a slick landing surface. The pilot of this ill-fated flight reportedly did attempt to abort the landing and take-off again but failed to achieve sufficient speed and altitude.
This crash took place less than a year after a midair collision between a U.S.-owned corporate jet and a Boeing 737-800 operated by Brazil’s low-cost Gol Airlines losing all 154 souls onboard when it plummeted into the Amazon – and was at that time called: “the nation’s worst air disaster”. Previously in 1996, a TAM jet plowed through a densely populated neighborhood just after takeoff from the same Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo killing all 96 people aboard.
Conversely, it must be noted that globally, airline safety statistics show that the first six months of 2007 are the safest ever reported. There were only 11 fatal accidents though June of this year, taking into account all categories of commercial airline operations, including cargo. Additionally, there have been no fatal jet accidents involving a major Western European, North American, or Australian carrier since November 2001.
But in the span of less than a year, Brazil has had two major airline crashes. Last September 29th’s disaster set off a widespread debate about the country’s air-traffic control system, including whether the military should remain in charge.
Once again, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva has declared three days of national mourning for: The Nation’s Worst Air Disaster. Let’s hope he and his government quickly act to address the safety of Brazilian aviation – with resolve.
James Alexander
