Ask the Pilot

We'll begin by granting the TAM pilots the benefit of the doubt and assume they had assured themselves of adequate stopping distance, at least to the letter of the law. To this point, evidence says the airplane touched down on speed, within the touchdown zone. (And they did not, as was alleged earlier, attempt a rejected landing maneuver -- that is, try to take off again after touching down.) But then we learn that the asphalt of runway 17R/35L was ungrooved. As you've probably noticed looking through airplane windows, most runways are laterally cut by thousands of evenly spaced grooves, which help drain water and improve traction. One of the big gripes at grooveless Congonhas was the presence of puddles during and after rain showers. Standing water is a prime contributor to hydroplaning. No different from when it happens in a car, hydroplaning causes an airplane to skim over the runway upon a thin film of water, unable to properly decelerate or maintain direction. Modern jets like the A320 have highly sophisticated anti-skid systems, but their effectiveness is reduced if the water is deep enough.

Brakes provide the bulk of an airplane's stopping power. But should hydroplaning occur and braking effectiveness is reduced or lost, the emphasis falls to reverse thrust. But guess what? We also learn that one of the A320's reversers may have been inoperative. Sure, planes are certified to fly with faulty reversers, but this would have sacrificed performance that already was marginal.

So now the situation looks like this: We have a landing aircraft at or near its maximum authorized weight, a faulty thrust reverser and a substantially increased danger of hydroplaning.

I hate to do it, but let's backtrack a bit. Maybe we shouldn't give the crew benefit of the doubt. This is only speculation, but did the pilots know standing water was present? Had they crunched all the numbers? Presumably they, and thousands of other pilots, had flown into Congonhas many times before in similar weather, with little or no difficulty. Perhaps, this time, conditions were just a little bit worse. Was the culprit an unforgiving runway, a sense of complacency, or a little of both? We'll find out in time.

In the interim, more than one Brazilian pilot has spoken to the press, calling Congonhas dangerous. I would temper that slightly. It isn't always hazardous, but it can be under particular combinations of circumstances. Over the past week, crews have been refusing to land there during inclement weather, while Brazil's airport authority, Infraero, announced plans for a replacement airport. Both of these gestures seem perhaps overdue. (Now, if the country could only get a handle on its air traffic control problems. Last Saturday, a massive radar outage over the Amazon caused scores of Brazil-bound flights from the United States to turn back or divert.)

Meanwhile, it's hard not to be reminded of the December 2005 incident at Chicago-Midway, in which a young boy was killed after a Southwest Airlines 737 overran a snowy runway and collided with a car. Like Congonhas, Midway is known for its short runways. Unlike Congonhas, however, the strips at Midway -- along with those at LaGuardia, Washington-National and a few other semi-notorious places here at home -- are grooved, well-maintained, longer (albeit slightly), wider and in generally better condition. Some are equipped with crushable overrun barriers.

The truth is, some airports will always be safer than others. Virtually none are categorically unsafe. When pilots speak of certain airports, they often describe them as "challenging." Please bear in mind that "challenging" and "unsafe" are wholly different things. (LaGuardia, for one, handles half a million takeoffs and landings annually; there hasn't been a runway-related accident there since the 1980s.) As in any profession, some tasks are more difficult than others, but well within the capabilities of the people trained to perform them and the machines they're trained to operate.

TAM, incidentally, is South America's largest airline and 20th largest in the world, transporting 25 million passengers each year. The carrier flies 101 aircraft, including about 65 Airbus A320/A319 models laid out in an all-coach configuration. The accident aircraft was outfitted with 174 seats -- 20 or so more than most A320 operators. (This doesn't, by itself, indicate that the ill-fated flight was unusually heavy, as passenger weights are only a fraction of a plane's total heft -- sometimes under 10 percent, even at maximum occupancy.) TAM's founder, Capt. Rolim Amaro, died in a helicopter crash in 2001.

South America's deadliest air disasters:

1. July 2007. A TAM Airbus A320 crashes on landing at São Paulo's Congonhas Airport, killing 191 (unconfirmed).

2. June 1989. A Surinam Airways DC-8 crashes at Paramaribo, Surinam, killing 178. Nine passengers survive.

3. August 2005. In western Venezuela, a chartered West Caribbean Airways MD-82 crashes after a dual-engine failure, killing all 160 on board.

4. December 1995. An American Airlines 757 en route from Miami to Cali crashes into a mountain near Valle de Cauca, Colombia. The crew had misprogrammed the flight's navigation system. All but four of the plane's 163 occupants perish.

5. March 1969. Moments after takeoff, a VIASA DC-9 slams into a neighborhood of Maracaibo, Venezuela, claiming the lives of 155 people, nearly half of them on the ground.

Special thanks to Marcio Pinheiro in Brazil for assistance with this story.

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