Flight JJ3054 was arriving at Sao Paulo's Congonhas Airport from Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, the airline said. TAM Airlines said that of the 186 people on board, 18 were TAM employees, six were crew members and 162 were passengers.
Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport is notorious for having short, slippery runways, reported CNN's Miles O'Brien, who is an amateur pilot. Runways at Congonhas were recently resurfaced, but the cutting of grooves to channel rainwater off the pavement had not been completed.
Tom Hennigan, a reporter from The Times of London in Sao Paulo, told CNN that flying into Congonhas "is like you are literally flying past people's living rooms in apartment blocks. Then you land on the runway. It is completely surrounded by the central part of Sao Paulo city. This is not an airport out on the edge of the city. This is right in the city."
In February, a Brazilian court banned large jets at the busy airport because of safety concerns. But there was an outcry about limiting the convenient, busy airport, and an appeals court reversed the ruling.
(CNN)
Brazil's airport authority said the resurfaced runway had not been grooved to drain rainwater and had planned to complete the job on July 28 after new concrete settled.
(Reuters)
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