Brazil jet disaster probe begins

Brazil jet disaster probe begins

Tam Airlines Flight 3054 from the southern city of Porto Alegre landed at Congonhas airport in driving rain.

The plane skidded across a crowded road before it crashed into a fuel depot and warehouse and exploded.

Reports spoke of motorists being killed on the road and people jumping out of the windows of the low-rise Tam Airlines building.

"The plane accelerated when it reached the end of the runway and tried to take off again to avoid the road, but it crashed into the building and exploded," eyewitness Junior Matos told AFP news agency.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has declared three days of national mourning for the victims of what is thought to be Brazil's worst air disaster.

São Paulo State Governor Jose Serra said none of the 176 people on board the Tam Airlines flight could have survived the crash, with temperatures in the fire reaching 1,000 degrees celcius.

The state's attorney general, Rodrigo Pinho, said the authorities would carry out a thorough investigation "to determine the cause and to identify who was responsible."

A Brazilian opposition congressman, Julio Redecker, is reported to have been among those on the flight.

Runway ban

Congonhas airport is notorious for its short and often slippery runway, and its proximity to the city center.

In February, a local judge banned the use of the airport by Fokker 100, Boeing 737-800 and Boeing 737-700 jets, but this was overturned by an appeals court.

Remedial work, including laying a new surface, has been carried out in recent months.

However, questions remain about whether the runway had been sufficiently grooved to drain water in heavy rains.

A day before Tuesday's accident, another plane skidded off the airport's runway.

Previously, the worst accident in Brazil's aviation history occurred last September, when a Gol Boeing 737 flying from Manaos to Brasilia crashed into the Amazon jungle, killing all 154 people on board after a mid-air collision with a small private jet.

In 1996, a Tam Airlines Fokker-100 skidded off the runway at Congonhas airport before bursting into flames, killing all 96 people on board and three on the ground.