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Plane crash: anger mounts
19/07/2007 14:50 - (SA)
Sao Paulo - Rescuers on Thursday pulled charred bodies from the burned out wreckage of Brazil's deadliest air disaster, amid angry accusations that airport safety concerns had been ignored.
All 186 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus 320 were believed to have died in Tuesday's crash at Sao Paulo's Cagonhas Airport, along with a number of people on the ground.
The Tam Airlines flight had careened off the slick runway upon landing in driving rain, skidded across a crowded avenue and slammed into a warehouse where it exploded in a fireball.
It was "a tragedy waiting to happen," said Cezar Britto, president of The Order of Lawyers of Brazil, echoing opposition and national media criticism of precarious conditions at the airport.
'There is no sign of survivors'
"What exploded in Cagonhas was not just the TAM airbus and almost 200 victims but the credibility of the Brazilian aviation system," Britto said.
"The runway was as slippery as soap," an unnamed pilot told the O Globo daily, adding that authorities should not have allowed the plane to land in such conditions.
One of the aircraft's black boxes was recovered.
Five people were still listed as missing and eleven people were in hospital with injuries, four of them in a critical state, the rescuers said.
"There is no sign of survivors," TAM President Marco Antonio Bologna said at a news conference.
There have been a number of incidents of planes skidding off the tarmac at the airport, including one the day before Tuesday's crash.
Pope Benedict XVI expressed his sorrow
"Control tower operators had warned the runway should be closed because it didn't have 'grooving,' but no one in the government wanted to hear about it," said Sergio Olivera, who heads the Federation of Air Controllers.
Brazil's airway infrastructure came under fresh scrutiny after the September crash of a Gol airliner with 154 people on board in the Amazon jungle. The plane had collided with a small jet in an incident blamed on a deficient air traffic control system.
Pope Benedict XVI expressed his sorrow, saying he prayed "for strength and comfort for the injured and for those affected by the tragedy."
Located just a few kilometres from Sao Paulo's city centre, Congonhas is Latin America's busiest airport, with an average of 630 daily landings and take-offs. It is mainly used for flights from other parts of Brazil and South America.
In February, a local judge banned the use of the airport by Fokker 100, Boeing 737-800 and Boeing 737/700 jetliners, but the ruling was overturned by an appeals court.
TAM's president declined to give an opinion on the runway's condition, saying he would await the outcome of investigations "to know what was the real cause of the accident".
- AFP
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