Danger in southern skies
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Air travel in South America is growing more hazardous as a boom in commercial aviation far outstrips the capacity of the region’s aging airports and traffic-control systems.
Brazil’s Congohas airport, which serves South America’s largest city, Sao Paulo, routinely closes when it rains because its main runway floods. Four commercial jets have slid off the runway while landing in the past year.
Brazil’s military-run air-traffic system, already under intense scrutiny after a midair collision between a commercial airliner and an executive jet killed 154 people last September, has collapsed repeatedly as controllers limit the number of planes they’ll handle. Thousands of flights have been delayed or canceled.
In neighboring Argentina, President Nestor Kirchner declared the country’s air system “broken” on March 16 and said he’d shift responsibility for air-traffic control from military to civilian officials.
The statement came after dozens of pilots for the local airline Austral refused to fly, claiming that the country’s only certified, long-range radar – at Ezeiza airport in the capital, Buenos Aires – hadn’t been repaired since lightning hit it March 1.
Air force officials had insisted for a week that the radar was working, but pilots began receiving official notices March 19 warning them that flight controllers were guiding planes manually, without radar coverage. Currently, all air traffic in Argentina is under manual control, with planes flying 10 minutes apart and at different altitudes.
In January, the International Federation of Airline Pilots’ Associations advised its 100,000 members to use caution while flying over Brazil. The group warned that controllers there failed to communicate flight plans or plan modifications to other controllers in the system and often were acting as if they had radar contact with planes in areas that radar doesn’t cover.
That’s prompted some foreign pilots to fly a few miles to the sides of their designated flight paths in Brazilian airspace, international experts said, just to make sure controllers haven’t accidentally put them at the same altitudes and headings as another aircraft. The pilots report the change to the controllers.
“Many are asking, ‘Is Latin America on the right trajectory?’ ” said William Voss, the president of the U.S.-based Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group that monitors air safety worldwide. “In a place where you have extra growth in air traffic, you can’t just use the same system. Additional oversight is needed, and it’s not being done.”
According to the foundation, Latin America’s accident rate from 1996 to 2005 was three times higher than the world average and eight times higher than that of the United States.
South America is still much safer to fly through than the world’s most dangerous regions: Africa, where there are 9.7 accidents that kill someone or destroy an airplane for every million takeoffs, and Asia (excluding China), where there are 6.7 such accidents per million takeoffs.
South America’s safety record has improved over the past decade and a half, as have records around the world. In Brazil, for example, 0.6 percent of the country’s air fleet was involved in an accident last year, compared with 2.5 percent in 1990.
But at 3.2 serious accidents per million takeoffs, the region lags way behind the safety records of the United States, China, Europe and Australia.
Air travel has been booming over the past four years as the region experiences its first spell of sustained economic growth in a decade. A jump in international tourism and the rise of low-cost airlines have contributed to the boom.
Regional airlines are buying dozens more planes, and passenger numbers are rising by around 10 percent a year in several countries, including by 43 percent in Brazil from 2003 to 2006. Most of the growth has been in domestic travel, although the number of international flights also is increasing.
Meanwhile, critics say government regulators are falling behind in key areas of air safety. Many countries lack sufficient radar coverage and some, such as Bolivia and Argentina, have almost no radar coverage, even under normal conditions. Pilots and flight controllers say they regularly work with faulty radar screens, outdated software and inadequate runways.
Most governments haven’t hired more flight controllers or bought new equipment to handle the growth, with notable exceptions such as Chile. Critics blame a lack of political will on the part of governments, widespread corruption and a shortage of resources.
Brazilian officials admit that they’re not keeping up with the rising demand but say air safety hasn’t been jeopardized.
“Our problem is the growth in air traffic has surpassed our capabilities,” said air force Brig. Maj. Ramon Borges Cardoso, the vice director of Brazil’s Department of Airspace Control. “It doesn’t help to just buy new airplanes. We need to build more landing strips too.”
Colombian officials said the rise of small air companies had contributed to a spate of crashes in their country, eight from 2002 to 2006, which is high for airspace that sees relatively little traffic.
“These small companies don’t have the same resources that the big airlines do, and the training isn’t as good,” said air force Maj. Alejandro Torres Cogollo, the chief of Colombia’s accident investigations division. “We are having a lot of problems getting the system to the ideal point.”
Although Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva demanded last week to know the “period, day and hour” that air traffic would return to normal, he was blocking a congressional investigation into the problems. Similarly, the investigation into September’s crash has stalled.
In Argentina, flight controllers and pilots said the president’s promises to rent radar to replace the one that was hit by lightning weren’t enough.
“The situation here is critical, and that’s the reality,” said Cesar Salas, the president of Argentina’s flight-controllers association. “It’s being sustained by the good will of the pilots and controllers, but not by the infrastructure.”