Air Traffic Controllers in Brazil Protest Working Conditions

Brazilian air traffic has been paralyzed for almost a week as flight controllers across the country have been taking unauthorized safety measures in the wake of the nation's worst air accident, a September collision that killed 154 people.

Flight controllers complain that they're working without enough manpower and have taken it upon themselves to make changes. They've reduced the maximum number of flights they monitor at one time from as many as 20 planes to 14, and they've lengthened the time between takeoffs from three to as many as 20 minutes, creating enormous backups on runways.

As a result, dozens of flights have been canceled daily, and airports have become campsites for weary travelers, many hoping to get away for Brazil's long Memorial Day weekend, which began Thursday. By Thursday afternoon, more than 600 flights were delayed by as many as 14 hours.

The backups have even frozen business in Congress by stranding legislators.

One controller, Vinicius Araujo, said he and his colleagues launched the measures in response to the Sept. 29 mid-air collision between a Brazilian airliner and an executive jet piloted by two Americans. He said the accident highlighted the system's dangers.

"We've been working at the limits for years, and this situation is a gamble and could cause accidents, which is what we're trying to avoid," Araujo said. "It's safer to keep these planes on the ground."

Jorge Botelho, president of the national flight controllers union, downplayed the crash's role in the controllers' action, saying concerns about problems in the system have long existed.

A Swiss air traffic controller, Christoph Gilgen, who led an international delegation to Brazil to support the controllers involved in the collision, said he believed that monitoring 14 flights at a time was probably the right limit.

"From what I've seen, it seems to be a reasonable evaluation for the system they have in place," he said.

All 154 people on the Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes flight died when their Boeing 737 lost control after the collision and plunged into the Amazon jungle. The executive jet owned by U.S. firm ExcelAire managed to land at a nearby military airstrip.

Brazilian authorities have seized the passports of the jet's New York-based pilots, Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino, to keep them in the country while investigations continue.

The newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported Thursday that the air traffic controllers were at fault because they'd ordered the U.S. pilots to fly at 37,000 feet, the same altitude as the Boeing jet at the time of the collision. The report, based on a leak from the investigation, said the information came from the executive jet's flight data recorder.

Brazilian officials have insisted for weeks that the U.S. pilots were to blame because they were supposed to be flying at 36,000 feet.

The pilots' Miami-based attorney, Robert A. Torricella Jr., said: "If in fact the ... tower tapes confirm what we have maintained, and I believe that they will, Jan and Joe should be permitted to return home immediately."

Brazilian Air Force Maj. Alexandre Spengler refused to comment on the newspaper report and denied that there were any problems with the country's air traffic control system. The air force oversees air traffic control and investigations into accidents.

Spengler said the government has resolved this week's crisis by bringing in more than a dozen additional flight controllers.

Araujo, the flight controller, said the controllers took action this week in part to protest investigations into their role in September's accident. Ten controllers involved in the accident have refused to talk to police investigators conducting a parallel criminal inquiry. The 10 exempted themselves by citing health reasons and are on paid leave. Eight other controllers not sought by investigators also went on leave after the crash.

Flight controllers in Brasilia also have come under criticism for not moving the Boeing out of the way, as required by international guidelines, after they lost radio contact with the executive jet over the Amazon.

"The moment you start investigating people while you expect them to work in such conditions, you create a snowball effect, and there comes a point where you say, `That's enough,'" Araujo said.

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