Plane carrying 170 crashes in São Paulo

[PhilDernerJr]

Excellent perspective for this tragedy, Ron.

[bonanzabucks]

My friend lives three blocks from CGH. Apparently, her brother and mother were driving by the building the plane hit three minutes before it happened. Scary! Thank God they're OK.

[Iberia A340-600]

Another terrible aviation tragedy for Brazil and a sad hit for TAM as they are expanding so much.

My condolences for the families of the passengers and to the passengers themselves.

I was in Brazil last month and was quiet surprised by the vast amount of aviation involvement in the country and how crowded everything is in the airports and how crowded the airports are with aircraft. ATC must have such a load on their hands but it is still no excuse for accidents like these to happen.

GOL has overcome the crash as I am sure TAM will.

[Matt Molnar]

New details have emerged.

-- First official death toll is 189, and could rise. 162 passengers + 18 employees on board + 6 crew + 3 dead on the ground.
-- The fence at the end of the runway and the cars on the adjacent highway were untouched, indicating the pilot was attempting to take off again when the plane hit a TAM building and a gas station.

More: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id ... &catnum=-1

[NIKV69]

I have been to Brazil 5 times. SP is a nice city but does carry a very high crime rate. It is very crowded too as a huge amount of people and traffic are stuffed into a small space. Daylight muggings are not rare and the police are not like here and have corruption problems. From what I saw the dirt poor are mixed right in with the rich and most crime I would guess is strictly for survival. Brazil's prisons are probably the worst in the world as well.

As for CGH it is like Midway in Chicago, but much more busy. From what I am reading it is very possible the failure to allow for the drainage may be the cause here. If this is true that plane was on ice skates and the pilot had no chance. We are not talking about ice or snow, we are talking about rain and even though the runways are short it is enough distance to land. Just not enough to allow a plane rollout in case the brakes or traction fail. Whenever you have an airfield smack dab in the middle of housing and developments this can happen. The WN overrun is one instance in which one life was lost and this was much worse.

[LGA777]

Couple more from LGA777. I agree with Nick, CGH is a lot like MDW, and even busier, the big differance is at CGH, there are very significant drops offs at both ends of the parallel runways.

A question for Bonazabucks, do you know or if not could you ask your friends, what was the function for Tam of the Tam Express building the aircraft hit ?

Thanks

LGA777

[bonanzabucks]

A question for Bonazabucks, do you know or if not could you ask your friends, what was the function for Tam of the Tam Express building the aircraft hit ?

Thanks

LGA777

I'll shoot off an email to her tonight, but I can't promise I will get a response right away. When I spoke with her, she was really distraught and in total disbelief.

[hiss srq]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070719/ap_ ... lane_crash


The crash may come to haunt Brazillian Goverment officials

[Matt Molnar]

Video of the landing and fire: http://www.breitbart.tv/html/3257.html

[bonanzabucks]

To answer the question, that TAM building was like a cargo office. This was from another friend. Her brother's girlfriend knew two people working in there and they were both killed.

[PhilDernerJr]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,291781,00.html

"...the pilots were unable to activate the spoilers..."

"...one of the plane's throttles was in the wrong position as it touched down, causing it to speed up instead of slow down."

Looks like the runway will no longer be to blame. What went on there? No spoilers and reverse thrust problems. Pilot or mechanical?

[hiss srq]

I still think that the runway was at least partially to blame. If you look at performance specs for airplanes and have a general knowladge of operations, aircraft performance etc etc... an ungrooved runway and contamination are bad juju from the get go. I have to pull out the stuff from my classes and see what the numbers for an A-320 on a runway with contaminaton granted it is not with an IAE powered airbus but a CFM. It should generally be the same though the question of asymentrical thrust is intresting.. Spoilers put weight on wheels a little faster though too. Another note and this is general for jets is that thrust reverse is not something used in the calculation of stopping distances for an airplane according to the manuals though there are addition al specs. Any additional stopping distance realized is a plus in a case like that. I think though that this airplane may have been overweight for a landing at that airport given the current weather and runway conditions. If a 320 is landing restricted at CLT during wet runways conditions and they have ten grand to play with I would imagine that the numbers would not add up there. Again, for the specifics I need to dig back a little from school.

[Nonstop2AUH]

Ryan I know you are a bit familiar with the A320, do you (or does anyone else) have any idea of what would cause one of the throttles to be in the wrong position? I know from watching Airbus landing videos that there is an aural warning to "retard" the throttles on touchdown. What would happen if this was not done? Could that be an issue here?

[hiss srq]

I do not know the answer to that and the information I would have to work with will probably not be able to answer that but I will do a bit of research and see what I can find. I will ask a crew tomorrow as well. Now this is just out of speculation on my part but it could be possible that they ad inadvertantly left the auto throttle engaged and were "fighting the computer" so to speak. It could be as simple as the crew was not handleingthe throttles properly too though. A million possibilities there though. I will do a little information hunt tomorow.