TAM A320 crash at Congonhas, Brazil

[marciovp]

Something fishy...

Can you make sense of this sequence of news published in VEJA?

This is an atitude that shows the need to learn with the accidents to avoid that they repeat. Captain Ranger Chen, investigative chief in the Aviation Security Council of Taiwan is part of this effort. He is the author of the report of the accident with the Airbus A320 from Transania at the Airport Sung Shan in Taipei, in October 18, 2004. Interviewed by VEJA he says: " At the time of the report, Airbus acepted our recommendation. It was said that the company had developped an alarm system for when the TLs were in an incorrect position during the landing. This did not have to do with the "retard, retard, retard" registered by the black boxes in the Congonhas accident, but one CRC. A continuous alarm that only would stop when the pilots place the TLs in the correct position. The alarm would be triple, besides a loud sound, a red light would go on in the cabin and a mensage would be read at the panel to indicate the situation. It was also said that a Service Bulletin would be served. The Airbus gave up the idea of implementing the system of alarm. We never received the Service Bulletim."

Veja also contacted the General Direction of Civil Aviation in France (DGAC) and the European Agency for Aviation Safety (EASA). If Airbus had sent a Sercie Bulletin, the company had to communicate the two agencies. DGAC and EASA did not receive the Bulletim mentioned by Airbus in the document to the chinese authorities in Taiwan.

The accident of the A320 from TAM in Congonhas is the third case on the same type of airplane when the TLs during landing were in an incorrect position. It ocurred three years after the recommendation from the Security Council of Aviation in Taiwan for the company to improve the alert system.

The vice-president for flight security of TAM, Marco Aurelio de Castro, announced in the CPI that the company is going to buy a equipment that warns the pilots of the incorrect position of TLs during landing. This new alarm is availabe since November 2006, when Airbus informed about its existence in a Service Bulletim sent to airlines that operate this king of plane.
In a practical way. The new alert. That costs 5000 dollars, is an atualization of a program in the computer of the plane, the System of Flight Alert- FWC, the initials in English. The present sound alert of short duration becomes together of a warning light e and text message in the command panel. This sound warning played during three seconds in the accident in Congonhas ("retard,retard,retard") and then stopped. This becase the computer presuposes that if the pilot doesn´t respond to the warning, there is a reazon- an obstacle in the runway or an attepmt to go around, for example.

After the accident with the A320 from Transania in Taipei –one TL was in the wrong position and one reversor was locked out, a situation like the one tragedy in Congonhas – the Security Council of Aviation in Taiwan sugested that the alarm should continue to sound even after the touchdown. Airbus responded that it had created a new system and thau it would send a Bulletim about this "very soon". This was in October 2004, that is, 25 months before the note of atualization sent to the airlines. Besides generating a text message and getting red light on in the panel, the alarm would send a continuous repetitive chime (CRC) – sound alarm veru loud that calls the attention for a grave problem. This would demand a radical reform in the program of FWC. The Airbus prefered only to upgrade the system. To justify, Yannick Maling, director of flight security at Airbus, tells that the alert would not help the pilot to correct the error during the crucial seconds of taking a radical decision.