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Airline says 200 dead in Brazil's plane disaster
(EFE News Service Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) TAM airlines said Wednesday that 200 people died when an Airbus-320 with 186 aboard crashed into a building near Sao Paulo's Congonhas Airport, the worst aviation accident in Brazil's history.
But in a press conference here, company president Marco Antonio Bologna said it would be premature to attribute the tragedy to the condition of the runway, which has been the explanation offered by most aviation experts in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's crash.
He denied that the wet runway could have been the cause of the accident and said that the firm's aircraft have logged dozens of landings and takeoffs in rainy conditions at Congonhas without experiencing any type of problem.
Bologna and other executives of the airline who accompanied him at an extensive press conference also defended the pilots and guaranteed that the aircraft was in perfect operating condition.
TAM Vice President Alberto Fajerman said the both pilots were very competent aircraft commanders, each with more than 10,000 flight hours.
"The two pilots were very experienced. There was not a pilot in training (in the cockpit), in contrast to what the press began saying," said Jajerman.
The Airbus MBK A320 that crashed was acquired by TAM in December 2006 after being bought from Costa Rica-based TACA, the Brazilian airline said.
"It had 26,320 flight hours and was in perfect condition (in terms of its) maintenance and flyability," TAM said.
As of Wednesday evening, emergency workers had recovered 174 bodies at the accident scene, bringing to 177 the number of confirmed fatalities. Three people who were severely injured when the airliner crashed into the building where they were working had died earlier at nearby hospitals.
The work of identifying the bodies will be difficult, judging from their condition, and the forensic exams will need to be supported by, among other things, the medical histories - including dental records, in all likelihood - of each victim.
Smoke and the penetrating odor of burned plastic still pervaded the crash site on Wednesday. The rescue teams worked amid the charred and twisted ruins of the plane, and the gas station and building it crashed into.
Authorities said that because of the heat of the fire that erupted inside the aircraft, it was virtually impossible for anyone to have survived.
Douglas Ferrari, a spokesman for the rescue crews, told the Folha On Line news agency that the work of recovering and identifying the bodies could take at least five days.
TAM released a complete list of the plane's occupants, but confusion prevailed regarding it at first because it said there were 176 people on board the plane, a figure later revised to 180 and then finally upped to a supposedly definitive total of 186: 162 passengers, 18 TAM employees and a six-person crew.
Among those confirmed dead is Brazilian lawmaker Julio Redecker, who was traveling from Porto Alegre to Sao Paulo to meet a connecting flight to the United States.
The aircraft, which left the southern city of Porto Alegre bound for Brazil's biggest metropolis, skidded off a rain-soaked runway at Congonhas airport Tuesday upon landing, narrowly missing vehicles on a highway crammed with afternoon rush hour traffic before it crashed into a gas station and a TAM warehouse.
Although rescue crews had initially said that 30 bodies had been discovered inside the TAM building, firefighters said the vast majority of the victims of the crash were occupants of the jet.
The impact caused a powerful explosion and eyewitnesses said the flames rose as high as 20 meters (yards). Authorities at the site said the accident had left the TAM building on the verge of collapsing.
The aircraft had skidded off a recently renovated runway, although according to some media reports it had been opened before the work had been completed.
According to specialists, a sheet of water forms on the runway when it rains making it difficult for planes' tires to grip the surface.
Although other pilots said the runway still lacked safety features such as drainage slots to facilitate the removal of water in case of rain, some government spokespersons pointed to the possibility that human error was to blame for the accident.
The head of the communications office of the presidency, Franklin Martins, said that while any information about the cause of the accident could be premature, the pilot apparently attempted an ill-advised take-off after the plane touched ground for fear it would be difficult to complete the landing.
The announcement of the accident caused passengers' relatives to clamor for information from TAM about the fate of their loved ones, both in Porto Alegre and in Sao Paulo, and there were scenes of sadness and near-hysteria involving distraught relatives in both cities.
The company placed counseling and aid units at the disposal of the relatives, some of whom on Wednesday decided to fly to Sao Paulo to identify and recover the remains of their loved ones, while others gathered in a center near the medical examiner's office that had been set up to receive them.
The authorities have launched an investigation into the causes of the accident.
They said the A320's black box had already been recovered in "good condition" and that it would be sent to the United States for detailed analysis.
On Monday, another aircraft also skidded off a runway at Congonhas, an airport used for domestic flights and which handles the country's largest amount of air traffic.
In the wake of Tuesday's catastrophe, Brazil's civil aviation authorities banned further use of the Congonhas main runway on rainy days pending completion of the accident probe.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has declared three official days of mourning in memory of the victims, called an emergency Cabinet meeting and canceled all of his scheduled activities for Wednesday as well as several domestic trips planned for this week.
Tuesday's crash came less than a year after a Boeing jet operated by Gol airline went down in the Amazon jungle killing all 154 people on board after a midair collision with a corporate jet, which was able to land safely. Until this week, that accident was Brazil's worst-ever air disaster.
Copyright 2007 EFE News Services (U.S.) Inc., Source: The Financial Times Limited
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