It was approximately 6:48 pm on July 17, 2007 when TAM’s Airbus A320 -today Latam-, which was coming from Salgado Filho airport, in Porto Alegre, tried to land at Congonhas airport, in São Paulo. The track was wet and, because of a recent refurbishment, it still had no groovingwhich are the grooves that facilitate the braking of the plane.
The landing maneuver was not successful: the Airbus ended up crossing the runway and crashing into a cargo building owned by the company, which was in front of the São Paulo airport. As a result, the plane exploded and caught fire. That accident, which this Sunday (17.Jul.2022) completes 15 years, caused the death of 199 people, 12 of them on the ground.
After 15 years, no one was held responsible or served time for the accident. In 2015, the Federal Court ended up acquitting the former director of Anac (National Civil Aviation Agency) Denise Abreu, the then vice president of operations at TAM, Alberto Fajerman, and the director of Flight Safety of the company at the time, Marco Aurélio dos Santos de Miranda e Castro, who were denounced by the MPF (Federal Public Ministry) for “attack against air transport security”, in the fault mode. For Justice, the defendants did not act with intent (intention).
The lack of punishment for the accident has become a deep imprint for the victims’ families. This is what journalist Roberto Corrêa Gomes, 66, told us, who lost his brother Mário Corrêa Gomes in the accident. “The most punished were the victims who died and the condemned were their families, who were left without their loved ones and did not see justice.”, he said, in an interview with Brazil Agency.
His brother Mário was 49 years old at the time and was a businessman in the advertising business, divorced and without children. “He was a young businessman from Rio Grande do Sul, very successful, highly awarded in Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo. He had only attended high school [atualmente o fundamental]. But he was brilliant, very smart. He had revolutionary ideas.” told Robert. “We were a family of 7 brothers. Our mother had died a year earlier, in 2006.”
On the day of the accident, Gomes was at his home in Porto Alegre, working. And the 1st information he received about the plane crash arrived on TV, at home. “That day the Pan American Games were taking place in Rio de Janeiro. And I was in my office and I heard a call on TV Bandeirantes that they were going to give medals to some Brazilian athletes. And I thought ‘I’m going to see our kids win medals’. I stopped the article I was writing and went to the next room, which is my TV room”, said.
“Only when I entered the room, the image changed. The image of the games came out and the image of that plane came in, against the building. And the presenter’s voice came in saying that a cargo plane, coming from Porto Alegre, had crashed into the TAM Express building. And a minute later he corrected: ‘No, no. The information that is coming in is that it is a passenger plane and we do not know the number of victims’”.
“It was late afternoon and I knew that Mário was going to São Paulo that day. Then I called my younger brother and asked: ‘Did Mário go to São Paulo?’. And he replied: ‘Yes, Beto. I’m going to the airport.’ And I said, ‘Come by and get me’. people froze”, said.
Confirmation by TAM that the brother was on that flight only reached them at dawn. “It was only at 2 am on the 18th that the list was released. Until then, our hope was that he had boarded another aircraft, landed in Guarulhos, ran out of battery or that he had landed in Viracopos, was still flying over… We cling to everything. But unfortunately he was on the flight.”
Association
Soon after the accident, the families of the victims decided to create an association, the afavitam (Association of Relatives and Friends of the Victims of Flight TAM JJ3054). She would not only help the families to face and share the pain of that period of mourning, but also to pressure the authorities about the investigations of that tragedy.
The journalist became a kind of volunteer press officer, helping to bring journalists closer to the victims’ relatives.. “I thought: we’re going to need the press because this story goes far. The biggest accident in Brazilian aviation does not end in a month. We need the press, otherwise we will be suffered and also invisible”. That’s how he started to perform this role voluntarily for the association, which became a new family for him.
“We became one big family. I come from a family of 7 men and now we are 6. This family is incomplete but I ended up gaining sisters, nieces and other brothers. We became one big family. Those who participated in the association were strengthened. But that family member who retired at home and did not participate in anything, was left with that pain just watching things on television – that one suffered much more”, he said.
In these years, the members of the association continued to have to deal with new losses. At the end of last year, for example, one of its most active members passed away: the vice president of Afavitam, Archelau de Arruda Xavier, who had lost his daughter Paula Masseran de Arruda Xavier in the plane crash. Archelau gave an interview to the report of Brazil Agency in 2017, complaining that year about the lack of punishment. “We will die with this sadness. Where it hurts the most is to see my wife missing, the brothers missing her. The 2nd thing that hurts a lot is to see that justice has not happened”, said at the time.
“There are families that have overcome, they can now think better. I still get emotional when I see stories [sobre o acidente]. But there are people who are sick. There are people who never recovered. There is even a mother who has already given an interview in the past and is now prohibited by doctors from doing so, such is the damage she has had so far with the loss of her daughter”, said Gomes.
Causes of the accident
The accident was investigated by 3 bodies. One of them, Cenipa (Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents), of the Aeronautics, concluded that a series of factors contributed to the tragedy. The report found, among several points, that the pilots moved, without realizing it, one of the levers [que determinam a aceleração ou reduzem a potência do motor] to the position idle (neutral) and left the other in position climb (ride up). The aircraft’s computer system mistakenly understood that the pilots wanted to go around (climb).
The document also reports that there was no audible warning to warn pilots about the failure to position the levers and that the crew training was flawed: the theoretical training of pilots, as it turned out at the time, only used interactive computer courses. Another problem indicated is that the copilot, although he had great experience, had few hours of flight time in A320 model aircraft.
In addition, at the time, the prohibition in Congonhas of landings with the reverse (airbrake) inoperative was not regulated. [ponto morto]which would prevent the plane from landing in these conditions on a wet runway.
Cenipa, however, is not an organ of punishment, but of prevention. Your role is to indicate the causes of the accident. The accident report, therefore, gives information and 83 recommendations so that tragedies like this do not happen again.
This report by the Air Force contributed to two other investigations, carried out by the Civil Police and the Federal Police, which led, however, to different conclusions about the culprits.
indictments
The Civil Police decided to indict 10 people for the accident, including employees of Infraero (Brazilian Airport Infrastructure Company), Anac and TAM airline. After the indictment, the process was taken to the State Public Ministry, which included another name and denounced 11 people for the tragedy.
However, the prosecution’s complaint was not taken to the state court. The case was referred to the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office because, in the prosecutor’s opinion, the case was a crime of attacking the safety of air transport, under federal jurisdiction. With that, the Federal Police began to investigate the case and, at the end of this process, decided to indict only the 2 pilots, Kleyber Lima and Henrique Stefanini Di Sacco, for the tragedy.
“It was a cowardly, convenient conclusion: the dead are to blame. Family members never accepted this version that the pilots were to blame. At most, that they were misled.” defends Gomes.
The Federal Police investigation turned into a complaint and, in this document, which was accepted by the Justice, prosecutor Rodrigo de Grandis decided, contrary to the indictment made by the Federal Police, to denounce 3 people for the accident: Denise Abreu, Alberto Fajerman and Marco Aurélio. dos Santos de Miranda e Castro, who were eventually acquitted by the courts.
“And then the Justice, in the 1st instance, acquitted them. There was an appeal to the higher court, which upheld the decision of the lower court judge, acquitting the defendants. In other words, the convicts ended up being the victims and their families”, said the journalist.
In 2017, the Federal Public Ministry informed that it would not appeal the decision that acquitted the defendants.
Tributes
This Sunday (July 17), several families returned to the airports of Porto Alegre and São Paulo to pay yet another tribute to the dead. In Porto Alegre, starting at 2 pm, family, friends, religious representatives and authorities meet at Largo da Vida, a roundabout near Salgado Filho International Airport. At 18:00, a mass will be celebrated in memory of the victims at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Porto Alegre.
In São Paulo, the families gathered at 9 am at the 17 de Julho Memorial, where the accident took place. The Memorial will be decorated with made-up birds that will be placed under each victim’s name. Throughout the day, family members will come to the site to bring flowers and dedicate their prayers and thoughts to their loved ones.
With information from Brazil Agency.
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