Tam A320 off runway in Sao Paulo

Cat Driver · Post by **Cat Driver** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 4:35 pm

Fox news is reporting an A320 off the runway and on fire in Sao Paulo Brazil.

Apparently it is Congonhas in the center of the city, the drop off's at the ends of the runway are very steep.

If it was the north end the drop off is real steep with a busy road below......looks real bad on TV.

Runway 17/34 is 6300 feet long.

golden hawk · Post by **golden hawk** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 4:42 pm

Brazilian plane crashes into gas station By ALAN CLENDENNING, Associated Press Writer
1 minute ago

A passenger plane with as many 170 people aboard crashed and burst into flames Tuesday after landing at Brazil's busiest airport, the nation's airport authority said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths by authorities, but flames shot into the sky and clouds of black smoke billowed into the air after the Airbus-320 skidded off the runway.

The plane then traveled across a busy road at the height of the evening rush hour in South America's largest city and slammed into a gas station, said Jose Leonardi Mota, a spokesman with airport authority Infraero.

In conflicting reports, some Brazilian media said the plane actually crashed into a building or warehouse owned by Tam, and television images showed firefighters spraying water onto the building bearing a Tam sign. Globo TV reported at least six people who were on the plane were undergoing treatment.

Tam Linhas Aereas flight 3054 was en route to Sao Paulo from the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre with between 150 and 170 people on board, Mota said.

"At this moment, we cannot determine the extent of possible injuries suffered by the airplanes occupants and crew members," Tam said in a statement.

The accident happened during heavy rains, and critics have warned for years that such an accident was possible at the airport because its runway is too short for large planes landing when the runway is wet.

A federal court in February briefly banned takeoffs and landings of large jets at the airport because of safety concerns at Congonhas airport, which handles huge volumes of flights for the massive domestic Brazilian air travel market.

But an appeals court overruled the ban on three types of planes, saying it was too harsh because it would have severe economic ramifications, and that there were not enough safety concerns to prevent the planes from landing and taking off the airport.

Tuesday's crash came 10 months after Brazil's deadliest crash, a September collision between a Gol Aerolinhas Inteligentes SA Boeing 737 and an executive jet over the Amazon rainforest.

All 154 people on the passenger jet died. The executive jet landed safely.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press

TTJJ · Post by **TTJJ** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:21 pm

The aircraft was landing on R35L at SBSP. It was not raining hard at the time, but it was raining. The rain was not associated with CB activity. It was not windy. I have no specific numbers, but I was out running errands all day close to the airport and that is what I saw.

There is a 20+ foot drop off the other end of R35L.
There are two-eight lane avenues off the end of the runway, one roughly parallel with the runway and the other roughly perpendicular to the runway.

The aircraft didn't hit a gas station as such, it collided with a building right beside a gas station and spread out into the gas station. The building it hit is a drop off point for TAM Air Cargo and therefore full of cardboard/plastics and people. The death toll is expected to reach 250.
See: S 23.619448 W 46.662303

It is a mess. The wind is blowing the flames toward the gas station, and it is a pretty big gas station. I fill up my car there. There are 260 Fire Fighters and Paramedics and 70 fire trucks at the scene. The roof of the building has collapsed onto the aircraft and is still burning 5 hours later. The area is surrounded by houses.

The only saving grace of this accident so far is that the aircraft sort of "flew" off the end of the runway left of centerline and passed OVER eight lanes of bumper to bumper traffic before hitting the building. The tail clipped a taxi on the way over. The tail is on the sidewalk. The plane went into the building like a torpedo.

The latest news (unconfirmed) is that ATC saw the pilot try to drag the plane into the air when it became obvious that it wasn’t going to stop, but it was going too slow and stalled into the building. If that’s true then my hat is off to the pilot who went down fighting.

This airport is my base. Runway, 35L had been returned to service less than 3 weeks ago after being resurfaced. Grooving has not yet been started as the concrete needed time to cure, at least that is what they told us at the airport briefing last month. Grooving is to start at the end of this month (July/07). Yesterday an ATR slid off the runway into the mud at high speed on landing in the rain. You can draw your own conclusions about whether the runway should have been returned to service without grooving.

The runway had been closed to 737 etc traffic by judicial order because a judge…on his own…without any technical support…looked up the runway length required for takeoff on the internet and decided that the runway was too short for those numbers. It took 3 days to convince him that he was using the distances for full gross weight (which nobody uses) and that there was already a 60% safety factor built into those numbers besides the obvious fact that all companies use runway analysis tables to calculate weights, distances etc.

I hate ground wogs who think they know aviation stuff.

The Press, in their Infinite Wisdom, is now saying that the Airbus 320 is different than “normal planes” because the pilot just uses a simple computer “joy stick” to control the computers that fly the plane. This may have caused the accident, they say, because the pilot has less control over the aircraft than in a “normal plane”. It makes you want to puke.

The TV now says that there were 16 people other than the 6 crew and 154 pax on board. As they were coming from a large pilot domicile base, I assume that the 16 were all flight crew coming to work.

It sucks...

invertedattitude · Post by **invertedattitude** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:26 pm

It does suck, but what sucks worse is that it appears there was a go around attempt, and they crashed into a comany building.

C-206 · Post by **C-206** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 1:52 am

Can't go around once thrust reversers are deployed.

bob sacamano · Post by **bob sacamano** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:15 am

News this morning is saying that the Brazilian authorities have already pointed the fingers at the PIC. The bodies are still in the wreckage!

If you deployed the thrust reverses and you wanna go around in a 320, hope you're taking off from JFK space center.

rigpiggy · Post by **rigpiggy** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:59 pm

Can any of you flying the bus do the numbers for a wet 6300' rwy at 2600asl just guessing around, 25celsius with say an hours fuel left and 189 people? both factored and unfactored

TFE731 · Post by **TFE731** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 6:53 pm

What do you think you are going to solve now? cmon.

onceacop · Post by **onceacop** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:07 pm

There are alot of marginal strips out there. Makes our runways look mighty long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_z5HtME9n8

Mig29 · Post by **Mig29** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:19 pm

pretty messy scene, what ever happend, not a pretty site...makes you appreciate how lucky that AF A340 was last summer!!

invertedattitude · Post by **invertedattitude** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:57 pm

They landed fast and hot, the second video, which is not sped up shows another TAM A320 on rollout, followed at the same video speed by the accident aircraft, buckets open going at least 3 times the speed.... incredible

http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/SaoPaulo/0 ... 05,00.html

invertedattitude · Post by **invertedattitude** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 11:04 pm

This video at the end anyway shows real incockpit footage of an approach to the airport, (pretty tame to me) (Skip over the simulated approach at first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a372SoNRzPA

Looks to be approaching from the opposite end, you can actually see the TAM building the accident airplane hit

rigpiggy · Post by **rigpiggy** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 3:17 am

TFE731 wrote:What do you think you are going to solve now? cmon.

They're dead now, let's look at the numbers and see the margins. maybe prevent it from happening again? How about the taf/metar for a true look at the conditions. Or maybe I'm just morbidly curious like the lookyloos slowing past the wreck. either way it will come out at the inquiry.

Alex YCV · Post by **Alex YCV** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 9:40 am

I hate to use CNN as a source, but another TAM plane aborted a landing there today. Plus some information that shows that the pilot went down fighting:

The plane slammed into a TAM airlines building after narrowly clearing the airport's perimeter fence and rush-hour traffic on a surrounding highway. Three people on the ground also died and another 11 were hospitalized.

So apparently they did get back in the air at least a bit.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/ ... index.html

Cat Driver · Post by **Cat Driver** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:04 am

So apparently they did get back in the air at least a bit.

The drop off at the end of the runway is quite steep and the highway is directly below the end of the runway if nothing else they had enough speed to have jumped the highway and probably saved many lives in the vehicles at that time of day.

As to the approaches to the runways in Congonhas when you are in cloud and following the ILS you have no idea of how many buildings there are below you.....until you break out at minimums and then you are concentrating on the runway, not the buildings.

invertedattitude · Post by **invertedattitude** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 10:34 am

As Cat said, there is a very steep drop off, and judging by the video they were carrying quite a bit of speed when they reached the end of the runway.

Big Pratt · Post by **Big Pratt** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:29 am

More security camera footage comparing a normal rollout of a plane that landed not too long before the crash to the one of the plane involved in the accident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHDOxrGq0Hg

Cat Driver · Post by **Cat Driver** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:55 am

As Cat said, there is a very steep drop off, and judging by the video they were carrying quite a bit of speed when they reached the end of the runway.

I was based at Congonhas for a few months and the airport was " interesting " from a visual perspective however on an operational level it was just another airport where due dilligance was the answer safety wise......

....the runway friction problem with sufficient rain after re paving with no grooving would have changed the situation considerably....

Heaven only knows what went wrong for those poor souls in that airplane and we can only feel sorrow for those people and aviation in general.

Lost in Saigon · Post by **Lost in Saigon** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:27 pm

Here is a good link that shows multiple cameras. I am not sure what we are looking at, but there is a timer in the window that shows some of these videos are sped up.

http://noticias.uol.com.br/uolnews/bras ... 6u946.jhtm

Big Pratt · Post by **Big Pratt** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:44 pm

The "normal" videos are NOT showing the plane involved in this accident but rather what a "normal" rollout would look like. Looks like footage of a different TAM 320 a couple minutes before the accident.

I wonder what that flash is right before it drifts off screen on the left side. compressor stall?

Spoke with a Brazilian friend of mine, ex ATC, and he heard that the #2 TR was inop. btw both pilots were 10 000hr +

I suspect that the final report will be a very long one with an in depth look into CRM and human factors (not only in the cockpit)

RIP

Mig29 · Post by **Mig29** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 7:01 pm

not to steer off the topic, but another one went off the runway and into the sea, fourtunatelly with no casualties and only few injuries on board.

Location: Santa Marta, Magdalena, Colubmia (Jul.18, 2007)

http://img231.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... 728nx5.jpg

swede · Post by **swede** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 8:16 pm

What was going on that caused them to attempt to land with that amount of speed?

V1RotateV2 · Post by **V1RotateV2** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 7:07 am

TAM confirmed that the Right (#2) thrust reverser was inop and therefore the airplane was flying without TRs as per MEL. This is only limiting if the runway has heavy contamination.

A320 pilots may be able to confirm that the airplane will add all the wind to the landing speed (designed as extra energy in case of a shear and go around) and the PIC needs to manually limit the extra speed in gusty winds and short runways. Don't know what the met was at the time of landing.

Anyway, it seems that the plane was landing fast and the runway was in less that good conditions (slippery) and no reverse to help.

There is never one single cause, let's wait until the investigation is underway and real information gathered before we can guess what happened.
In the meantime let's pray for those crew members and passengers.

invertedattitude · Post by **invertedattitude** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 8:08 am

I would assume as in most airplanes a T/R disabled can be MEL'd?

CAL · Post by **CAL** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:41 am

sadly it seems almost anything can be MEL'D but dont the landing distance numbers for different airports not include the additional benefit of thrust reverse?