Mechanical failure 'did not cause Brazil air disaster'

Mechanical failure did not contribute to last month’s crash of an Airbus A320 in Sao Paulo, a senior executive with the aircraft manufacturer said.

Testifying before Brazil’s congress in Sao Paulo, the Airbus executive said the flight data recorders of the ill-fated plane did not show any flaws that would have prevented the aircraft from operating normally.

TAM flight 3054 sped down the runway at Congonhas airport, Brazil’s busiest, on July 17, jumped a major road and slammed into an air cargo building, killing all 187 people aboard and 12 people on the ground in Brazil’s deadliest air disaster.

Yannick Malinge, Airbus’ vice president for flight safety, told MPs that one of the plane’s throttles may have been set in the wrong position as it touched down, causing it to speed up instead of slowing down.

The website of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies also quoted Malinge as saying the spoilers – the aerodynamic brakes on an aircraft’s wings – were working normally and that the throttles were not set to idle during the landing.

Leaving the throttles open prevents a plane’s spoilers and auto-braking system from functioning, according to experts quoted by the media.

Malinge, testifying before a congressional committee investigating the nation’s air safety, hinted that human error may have been a factor in the accident.

“Human factors are the most difficult ones to verify,” he said.

Investigators have yet to determine the cause of the crash, but suspicion has fallen on everything from problems with the jet’s thrust reverser, to pilot error, to the short, slippery runway at Congonhas that provides little margin of error for pilots attempting to land.

Airbus is a unit of Toulouse-based European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company.