TAM Linhas Aéreas Flight 3054

TAM Linhas Aéreas Flight 3054
	The vertical tail of the TAM machine protrudes from the rubble of the building
Accident summary
Accident type	Agreement from the runway
place	Sao Paulo-Congonhas Airport , Sao Paulo , Brazil
date	July 17, 2007
Fatalities	199
Survivors	0
Injured	14th
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Airbus A320
operator	TAM (YY)
Mark	PR-MBK
Passengers	181
crew	6th
	Lists of aviation accidents

TAM Linhas Aéreas flight 3054 (JJ 3054) was a scheduled domestic flight of the Brazilian airline TAM Linhas Aéreas with an Airbus A320 from Porto Alegre to São Paulo . The plane had an accident on July 17, 2007 at 6:50 p.m. local time (11:50 p.m. CEST) while landing at São Paulo-Congonhas Airport .

course

Map of the scene of the accident

The aircraft took off from Porto Alegre Airport at 5:16 p.m. local time (9:16 p.m. CEST ). The accident occurred while landing at São Paulo-Congonhas International Airport at 6:50 p.m. local time (11:50 p.m. CEST). After successfully touching down on the runway, the machine was braking. According to eyewitness reports, the machine skidded uncontrollably over the runway due to aquaplaning . It is certain that the aircraft rolled over the runway end, crossed the busy Avenida Washington Luís , which was about 15 meters below, and then hit a TAM air cargo building and caught fire.

The day after the crash, rescue teams recovered the aircraft's flight data recorder . According to the Brazilian MPs Efraim Filho and Marco Maia, an initial evaluation of the black box showed that the plane was still traveling at 175 km / h at the time of the impact. This can be traced back to two reasons: On the one hand, TAM admitted that the thrust reverser of an engine was not functional, and on the other hand the spoilers , which produce braking air turbulence, were not extended. According to preliminary investigations, this was due to the fact that the pilots did not set the right thrust lever to "idle" as required, due to the defective or deactivated reverse thrust on engine 2 (right), but instead to "climb" after touching down. while he set the left thrust lever to the "reverse" position. Due to the position of the right thrust lever, the aircraft's electronics prevented the spoilers from deploying and the automatic brakes from being activated. With the exception of the reverse thrust on engine 1, none of the automatic braking systems were initially available, while engine 2 continued to generate forward thrust. In addition, the asymmetrical thrust of the two engines caused the aircraft to pull sharply to the left. About 11 seconds after touchdown, the pilots tried to brake with the manual brake and to keep the machine on the runway, but this happened too late. So the machine left the end of the runway at an angle of approx. 100 kn (approx. 180 km / h). In contrast to earlier reports, no attempt had been made to take off; this was the result of the analysis of the voice recorder.

The cause of the accident of an Airbus A310 operated by S7 Airlines on July 9, 2006 in Irkutsk , in which 125 people died, was similar : changes in the reverse thrust on the right accidentally and unnoticed caused the left engine to thrust forward again, the reverse thrust of which was deactivated. The position of the throttle control then caused the spoilers on the wings, which had already been extended, to be automatically retracted and the automatic braking system to be deactivated. As a result, the machine came off the runway and shot over it.

The accident was the 16th total loss of an Airbus A320 .

Victim

General

A total of 199 people were killed in the accident. The fatalities were all 187 people who were on board the machine at the time of the accident. There were 162 passengers, 19 airline employees and six crew members. Twelve other people were killed on the ground. Fourteen people on the ground were injured. The accident was the most serious aviation accident to date in both Latin America and the most serious of an Airbus A320.

Known victims

In the accident, Júlio Redecker and Paulo Rogério Amoretty Souza, two nationally known personalities, were killed. Redecker from Novo Hamburgo ( RS ) was the opposition leader in the Brazilian House of Representatives . From 1995 until his death he was a member of parliament for various parties (most recently for the PSDB ) for a total of four legislative periods. He was on his way to Washington to meet with members of the US Parliament. Amoretty Souza from Porto Alegre was president of the Brazilian soccer club SC Internacional Porto Alegre from 1998 to 1999 and a member of the presidium of the Brazilian Tennis Federation (CBT) and lawyer of the SC Corinthians Paulista soccer club until his death .

Aircraft

Airbus A320 of TAM

The plane involved was an Airbus A320-233 with the air vehicle registration number PR-MBK and the serial number 789. It was followed by two International Aero V2527E-A5 engines driven. The machine was completed in February 1998 and put into service by TACA in March 1998 . From November 2003 she flew for Pacific Airlines . Before the accident it belonged to Pegasus Aviation and had been in the service of TAM since December 2006. At the time of the accident, the aircraft had completed around 26,320 flight hours and more than 9,300 flights. The last A-check took place on July 13, 2007. The aircraft structure was checked on November 20, 2006. It has since been confirmed that problems with the thrust reverser arose days before the accident, which is why it was deactivated for the right engine. According to TAM, this procedure is permissible according to the manufacturer's guidelines.

crew

Firefighters transport the body of one of the victims from the scene of the accident

The captain Henrique Stephanini di Sacco (born October 29, 1954) from São Paulo (state: São Paulo) had 14,486 hours of flight experience and had been with TAM since November 2006. Before that, he was a pilot at Transbrasil . His copilot Kleyber Lima (born on March 22, 1953) from Porto Velho (State: Rondônia ) had 13,654.4 hours of flight experience within TAM (total experience: 14,744.1 hours) and had been employed by TAM since November 1987.

Safety concerns at São Paulo-Congonhas Airport

The scene of the accident is on the other side of Avenida Washington Luís. The red and white painted tower of the Approach Lighting System can be seen on the right.

Confidence in the flight safety in Brazil in general has been shaken since September 2006, when a Boeing 737 on the Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 with an Embraer Legacy 600 over the rainforest of the Amazon collided. Security problems in Congonhas were pointed out several times before the TAM accident. On the one hand, the two runways are relatively short at 1940 meters (main runway) and 1435 meters (secondary runway), on the other hand, there is virtually no run-off zone at the end of the runway, especially in the north-westerly direction (where the TAM machine touched down). In this direction, both railways end directly in front of an approximately 15-meter-high slope with an approx. 30 ° incline, which is followed by an eight-lane and a six-lane main road lined with buildings. It was also known that in Congonhas there were aquaplaning problems when it rained due to rainwater accumulating on the runways.

In February 2007 the judge of a Brazilian federal court ruled that the aircraft types Fokker 100 , Boeing 737-800 and Boeing 737-700 are no longer allowed to use the airport. The Airbus A320 was not among the banned aircraft despite the fact that it is heavier than both the Fokker 100 and the Boeing 737-700. Pilots had complained that standing water on the runway reduced braking capabilities and that there was a risk of aquaplaning for the aircraft; Among other things, in 2006 a Boeing 737 of the Brazilian airline BRA Transportes Aéreos (BRA) slid over the end of the runway, but came to a halt just short of the slope. The judge had ruled that the runway had to be 388 meters (1275 ft ) longer in order to be safely used by the aircraft types mentioned. At that time, the airline TAM had appealed against the decision of the court. The airport administration appealed against the court decision, which was then overturned the next day. An appeals court justified the measure by saying that the economic consequences were too severe and the safety concerns did not justify such a drastic measure. "The runway had been reopened because of public pressure," accused aviation consultant Gianfranco Beting in a television interview. "That was an on-call disaster."

Parts of the main landing gear are recovered

Infraero , the state operator of most of Brazil's airports, has since taken some measures to reduce the risk of runway flooding, but that work was reportedly ongoing. Milled water drainage grooves were missing. The main runway had previously been closed for several weeks to address the stagnant water problem. On July 16, 2007, the day before the fatal incident, two other aircraft had problems with aquaplaning, but none of them were injured. One of these machines, an ATR 42 from Pantanal Linhas Aéreas , slid from the runway onto the grass under similar weather conditions.

Consequences of the accident

Due to the fundamental security risk of the airport, it was temporarily under discussion to close it. In addition, the head of the Brazilian airport operator Infraero , Carlos Pereira, was fired because Infraero had cleared the runway for drainage despite the lack of grooves.