At least 195 feared dead in Brazil air crash

Rescue crews today pulled dozens of bodies from a plane that crashed and burst into flames at a Sao Paulo airport, as the number of people feared dead rose to 195 in what would be Brazil’s worst air disaster.

The TAM airlines Airbus-320 was en route to Brazil’s busiest airport from Porto Alegre yesterday when it skidded on the rain-slicked runway, crossed across a busy road and slammed into a fuel station and TAM building.

Today, the airline raised the number of people onboard the plane by four to 180 and officials said the chance of finding survivors was near zero.

A Sao Paulo public safety official said 15 bodies had been recovered from the ground.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of national mourning following Brazil’s second major air disaster in less than a year. In September, a Gol Aerolinhas Inteligentes SA Boeing 737 and an executive jet collided over the Amazon rain forest, killing 154 people in what had been the deadliest air disaster to date.

Emergency workers had recovered that 56 bodies from wreckage of the TAM airliner by early today as well as the TAM airlines Airbus-320’s “black box” flight data recorder, according to the Web site of O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper.

Presidential spokesman Marcelo Baumbach said no cause would be immediately released because it was premature to do so.

The runway at Sao Paulo’s Congonhas airport has been repeatedly criticized for its short length, and two planes slipped off it in rainy weather yesterday, though no one was injured in either incident. The airport is ringed by heavily populated neighbourhoods.

The TAM flight was landing on Congonhas’ 6,362ft Runway 35, which was recently resurfaced, but not grooved, which would provide better breaking in rainy conditions. There were plans to regroove the surface by the end of July.

Because of its short length, Congonhas is known among pilots as the “aircraft carrier”. They are instructed to touch down in the first 1,000 feet of runway, or do a go-around if they overshoot the immediate landing zone.

In France, Airbus said it was sending five specialists to Brazil to help investigate the crash. The company will provide “full technical assistance” to France’s bureau for accident investigations and to Brazilian authorities.

The single-aisle, twin-engine plane, delivered in 1998, had logged about 20,000 flight hours in some 9,300 flights, the European planemaker said. More than 3,000 planes from the A320 family have been produced and delivered over the years, Airbus said.