Over 200 Dead in Brazil Jet Crash
'Pakistan Times' Monitoring Desk

SAO PAULO (Brazil): A Brazilian passenger plane skidded off a runway in driving rain and crashed into a building bursting into flames and killing 200 people on board and on the ground, a fire service chief told local media.

"There's 200 killed over there," Manuel Antonio da Silva Araujo, a colonel in Sao Paulo's fire department was quoted as saying by a Brazilian daily website.

Tam Arlines, Brazil's largest, said the Airbus 320 was carrying 170 passengers and a crew of six when it crashed into the airline's own offices across from the airport, which is located inside Sao Paulo city limits.

An earlier news TV report on the accident put the number of fatalities at three, with eight injured inside the building.

Tam's flight JJ3054 from Porto Alegre, to the south, skidded off the runway, which was wet from rain, crossed a road and slammed into a Tam Express office across from the airport that handles packages and equipment, the airline said.

The airplane disappeared inside the building with only its tail end remaining visible from the outside, witnesses said.

As firefighters battled the blaze, two hours after the crash the first victims were seen taken out of the building, witnesses said.

Earlier reports had said the plane had crashed into a gas station outside the airport perimeter.

A spokesman for airport managing company Ifraero refused to say how many victims the accident had caused so far for ethical reasons, "because first we have to inform their families."

"At present we cannot determine the extent of the damage or if there are any potential injuries among the occupants of the plane, passengers or crew," said Tam one hour after the accident.

"Tam has activated its Victims and Relatives Assistance Program and is offering a free telephone hot line for the benefit of relatives of the passengers and crew" of flight JJ3054, the airline added in a statement.

Public Safety officials said 50 fire trucks and 150 rescuers were on the scene battling the blaze caused by the accident.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered Air Force chief Junito Saito to the scene of the accident. Air flight control is handled by the military in Brazil.

Lula conferred late Tuesday with his Defense Minister Waldir Pires and other cabinet members over the accident.

Congonhas airport has been closed to air traffic and all streets around the Congonhas airport, which is situated inside city limits, have been closed by police.

Flights are being diverted to other airports serving the Sao Paulo area, local media said. On September 29, a Brazilian Gol Boeing 737 flying from Manaos to Brasilia crashed into the Amazon jungle killing all 154 people on board after it collided in mid-air with a small private jet, whose seven occupants were unhurt after making an emergency landing.

Details

The pilot of an airliner that burst into flames after trying to land on a short, rain-slicked runway apparently tried to take off again, barely clearing rush-hour traffic on a major highway. The death toll rose Wednesday to 189 and could climb higher.

The TAM airlines Airbus-320 flight that originated in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil on Tuesday cleared the airport fence at the end of the runway and the busy highway but slammed into a gas station and a TAM building, causing an inferno.

The 6,362-foot runway at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport has been repeatedly criticized as dangerously short. Two planes slipped off it in rainy weather just a day earlier. Pilots call it the "aircraft carrier" — it's so short and surrounded by heavily populated neighborhoods that they're told to take off again and fly around if they overshoot the first 1,000 feet of runway.

By contrast, New York's LaGuardia Airport has a 7,003-foot runway that accommodates similar planes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

"What appears to have happened is that he (the pilot) didn't manage to land and he tried to take off again," said Capt. Marcos, a fire department spokesman who would only identify himself by rank and first name in accordance with department guidelines.

Temperatures reached 1,830 degrees inside the plane, and officials said there was no way passengers could have survived.

"All of a sudden, I heard a loud explosion, and the ground beneath my feet shook," said Elias Rodrigues Jesus, a TAM worker who was walking nearby when he saw the crash. "I looked up and I saw a huge ball of fire, and then I smelled the stench of kerosene and sulfur."

TAM Linhas Aereas SA said 186 were on the Airbus-320 — 162 passengers, 18 TAM employees and a crew of six. "Unhappily, there is no sign of survivors," said Marco Bologna, the airline's chief executive offer, at news conference.

Bologna added that three TAM workers in the building were killed and five others were missing. He did not say whether the missing are presumed dead.

There were fears of more dead on the ground, with 14 others taken to hospitals, where their conditions were not known.

Emergency workers have recovered 117 badly charred bodies, along with the plane's flight data recorder, said Antonio de Olin, cheif of the police station at the Congonhas airport. Forensic doctors were gathering information from relatives to help with identifications, he said.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of national mourning for Brazil's second major air disaster in less than a year.

His government is under increasing pressure to deal with Brazil's aviation woes.

In September, a Gol Aerolinhas Inteligentes SA Boeing 737 and an executive jet collided over the Amazon rain forest, killing 154 people. Wednesday's crash now replaces that tragedy as Brazil's worst air disaster.

Since then, congressional investigations have raised questions about the country's underfunded air traffic control systems, deficient radar system and the airlines' ability to cope with a surge in travelers. Controllers — concerned about being made scapegoats — have engaged in strikes and work slowdowns to raise safety concerns, causing lengthy delays and cancelations.

Presidential spokesman Marcelo Baumbach said it was premature to declare a cause, but critics have warned for years of the danger of such an accident when large planes land in rainy weather at Congonhas airport, Brazil's busiest.

In 1996, a TAM airlines Fokker-100 crashed shortly after taking off from the same airport, killing all 96 people on board and three on the ground. In February, a federal court briefly banned takeoffs and landings of three types of large jets because of safety concerns. An appeals court overruled that, saying the safety concerns weren't sufficient to outweigh the severe economic ramifications for Brazil.

A320s were not covered under the judge's ban, and the TAM jet that crashed was a relatively recent model, said William Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va.

"So there are no red flags coming up, it sounds like a straightforward runway overrun," Voss said.

The single-aisle, twin-engine plane, delivered in 1998, had logged about 20,000 flight hours in some 9,300 flights, Airbus said.

Still, rainy conditions were a particular concern at the airport. Globo News television played tapes of conversations between flight controllers and pilots complaining about slick conditions on the runway days before the latest accident.

Tuesday's TAM flight was landing on Congonhas' main 6,362 feet-long runway, which was recently resurfaced but not grooved to provide better braking in rainy conditions. There were plans to regroove the surface by the end of July.

In France, Airbus said it was sending five specialists to Brazil to help investigate and would provide "full technical assistance" to France's bureau for accident investigations and to Brazilian authorities.

Emergency workers searching for bodies used a crane to maintain the structure of the destroyed TAM building.

The airline released a list of most of the people on the flight early Wednesday morning, but did not specify their nationalities. Opposition congressman Julio Redecker was among those on the flight.

"TAM expresses its most profound condolences to the relatives and friends of the passengers who were on Flight 3054," the company said.

Pope Benedict XVI, who visited Sao Paulo in May, also sent his condolences.

The airline flew 67 relatives of the victims from Porto Alegre to Sao Paulo Wednesday after they passed the night in a closed room. They arrived teary-eyed and unwilling to talk to the media.

But one man who spoke with the Associated Press earlier, Lamir Buzzanelli, said his 41-year-old son, Claudemir, an engineer, had called him from a business trip to Porto Alegre to say he was in the plane. "I've been calling him on his cell phone, and all I get is his voice mail," Buzzanelli said, his eyes tearing up.

Despite the crash, authorities reopened the airport Wednesday, using an auxiliary runway.

IATA to Probe

A report from Montreal says that the International Air Transport Association has offered its assistance to Brazil and Tam Airlines in probing of a jet crash in Sao Paulo that claimed some 140 lives, a spokesman said Wednesday.

"We have offered to help the government (of Brazil) and the airline," Steve Lott, a spokesman for the Montreal-based IATA was quoted as saying.

"There are so many factors at play here. We are not an accident investigator. We are not going to speculate on what happened but we would encourage an open, and vigorous, and thorough investigation," he said.

The Tam Airlines Airbus 320 careened off a notoriously short runway at Sao Paulo's Cagonhas airport as it landed in driving rain late Tuesday, skidding across a crowded avenue and slamming into a warehouse where it burst into flames.

Sao Paulo State Governor Jose Serra said none of the 186 people aboard Flight 3054 from the southern city of Porto Alegre could have survived the inferno.

By Wednesday morning, rescuers had retrieved 137 bodies, and another three people died after being taken to hospital. Several people who were on the ground at the time of the crash were among the dead.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which is responsible for aviation standards, said while talking to an international news agency, it would wait for the results of an investigation before commenting.

"That accident report will hopefully reveal the causes of the disaster ... and whether we must modify or improve our standards to ensure that this type of accident isn't repeated," said ICAO spokesman Denis Chagnon.●