|
A Lan Airlines SA plane was forced to make an unscheduled landing in São Paulo because of a lack of service by Brazil's air traffic control system, the company said.
Lan's flight 705 was en route from Madrid to Santiago when it was forced to land, delaying its arrival. The company, Chile's largest carrier, said in an e-mailed statement today that "restrictions" in Brazil's air traffic control service near Curitiba, in the southern state of Paraná, caused the interruption of the flight. But virtually all takeoffs from three major airports in Brazil were canceled Tuesday night after an air traffic communications system broke down, making it difficult for controllers to communicate with pilots and creating air travel chaos. Brazil's Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement that takeoffs were banned at the airport in the capital of Brasília and in the large central city of Belo Horizonte. Many takeoffs were also canceled at the airport in São Paulo that handles domestic flights, though the authority allowed flights to continue on the busy São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro shuttle route. Authorities were still allowing planes to land at the three airports and almost all international flights departing São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, take off from a separate airport unaffected by the government order. But the Belo Horizonte and Brasília airports also serve some international destinations, and all takeoffs were prohibited from those airports. The problem emerged when a communications system in Brasília inexplicably broke down, reducing the number of radio frequencies and making it hard for controllers to reach pilots flying commercial jets in some of Brazil's busiest air traffic corridors, the government's Agencia Brasil news agency reported. Federal police discounted the possibility of sabotage, saying the problem appeared to be technical and that they would only investigate if asked by Brazil's military, which runs the air traffic control system in Latin America's largest country, Brazil's Agencia Estado news agency reported. The breakdown initially caused huge delays Tuesday morning, prompting passengers to sleep on airport floors. Authorities decided later to cancel the takeoffs at the three airports until the communications system is repaired. The aviation authority said the system could be repaired by Wednesday, December 6, but warned travelers to check on flights with airlines and acknowledged that the incident was Brazil's most disruptive air traffic communications failure in history. "There has never been a collapse like this," Milton Zuanazzi, who heads the aviation authority, told the Web site of the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, Brazil's largest. It also came as most air travelers in Brazil have had to put up with more than a month of serious flight delays sparked by a job protest by controllers. Following Brazil's worst-ever air crash disaster in September, the controllers began following regulations to the letter in a protest that significantly slowed operations and is having a financial impact on Brazilian airlines. Under the "work to rule" campaign, they have refused to handle more than the number of flights recommended under international standards and are strictly observing times between landings and takeoffs. The protest came amid complaints that Brazilian controllers are overworked, underpaid and understaffed despite strong commercial flight growth in recent years. The commander of Brazil's air traffic control system was subsequently dismissed late last month, though Defense Minister Waldir Pires insisted that the move was a routine transfer. But it came just days after shares in Gol and Brazil's Tam Linhas Aereas SA airline fell because of continued flight delays that government officials had said they would solve. Authorities are still investigating whether actions by controllers played a role in the Sept. 29 mid-air crash above the Amazon jungle that killed 154 people in a collision between a Gol airlines Boeing 737 and an Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet. All of the passengers on the Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes SA flight died, but the pilots of the executive jet managed to bring their plane down with no injuries to the seven on board. Brazilian authorities prevented the two American executive jet pilots from leaving the country as investigators probed the crash, but a court ruled Tuesday that they can pick up their passports and leave Brazil within 72 hours. They have been holed up in a hotel fronting Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach for more than two months. Mercopress
 |
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.