|
The Brazilian Air Force says that they have no report of a near collision involving military or civilian planes in recent days, but three flight controllers say that 45 days after the air accident that killed 154 people another tragedy involving two planes almost happened again in the skies of Brazil.
The three air traffic controllers from Brazilian capital Brasília, told their story but asked to remain anonymous in order to avoid any retaliation from their military bosses The too-close-for-comfort incident, according to these men, occurred November 13, a Monday, around 3 pm, 45 days after the shock between the Legacy piloted by two Americans and the Gol's Boeing 737, over the Amazon forest in the state of Mato Grosso. Although both planes, one from the FAB (Brazilian Air Force) and the other from a commercial airliner, have crossed paths 2 nautical miles away from each other, the proximity is considered dangerous and grave and can be seen as a grazing between the two aircraft. Aviation experts don't call it critical however. The revelation about the near accident was made by Folha de S. Paulo, the Brazilian diary with the largest circulation in the country. in its November 19 Sunday issue. According to air control rules, planes are supposed to keep a distance of 10 miles with 5 miles being the minimum acceptable between aircraft in the same altitude. When they are in different altitudes they are supposed to have a 1,000 feet separation. The work of maintaining planes far apart at all times is the responsibility of air controllers, who are supposed to contact pilots when a course correction is needed. It happens that the Brazilian Air Force, two weeks after the Gol accident, decided to put the Air Defense in charge of the military planes taking them out from the flight controllers jurisdiction. The idea was to cut in line preventing military flights from being caught into the work-to-rule campaign by air traffic controllers, which crippled air travel in Brazil, delaying flight up to 20 hours. The incident reported by the anonymous controllers happened when a commercial plane flying to São Paulo left the Brasília airport and started its ascent. At that moment, the monitor of a controller showed the two planes crossing one over the other. For a moment he didn't know what to do and feared the worst had happened. It's possible though that the pilots of the planes never noticed how close they were of each other. Routine procedures at the air control tower require that incidents like this one be reported so that an internal investigation can be conducted. After all the denials from the FAB, however, it's doubtful that any report will be filed. Controllers were particularly tense that Monday, after two weeks of delayed flights and chaos in all major Brazilian airports. Forced to remain for days in the Brasília control center (Cindacta 1) some workers weren't feeling good. In two occasions, the anonymous controllers revealed, some of them protested what they called undue interference by the Air Defense in their work.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.