SAO PAULO, Brazil - A plane crashed and burst into flames yesterday after skidding off a runway, which had been criticized as being too short, at Sao Paulo's airport. All 175 people aboard were feared dead, the state governor said.
The Tam airline's Airbus-320 slid off the runway at Congonhas airport in a driving rain, then crossed a busy road at the height of rush hour in South America's largest city before slamming into a gas station, said Jose Leonardi Mota, a spokesman with airport authority Infraero.
A witness said he saw one charred body as flames shot into the sky and clouds of black smoke billowed into the air after the crash.
"I was told that the temperature inside the plane was 1,000 degrees [Celsius], so the chances of there being any survivors are practically nil," Sao Paulo State Gov. Jose Serra told reporters at the airport. The temperature in Celsius translates to about 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit.
As many as 12 people on the ground were injured and taken to hospitals, Serra said.
Tam Linhas Aereas flight 3054 was en route to Sao Paulo from the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre with between 150 and 170 people on board. "At this moment, we cannot determine the extent of possible injuries suffered by the airplanes' occupants and crew members," the airline said in a statement.
The accident happened during heavy rains, and critics have warned for years such an accident was possible at the airport because its runway is too short for large planes landing when it is wet.
A federal court in February briefly banned large jets' takeoffs and landings because of safety concerns at the airport, which handles huge volumes of flights for the massive domestic Brazilian air travel market. An appeals court overruled the ban on three types of planes, saying there were insufficient safety concerns to outweigh the severe economic ramifications.
To view a video of the crash go to http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2007/07/19/vo.brazil.plane.landing.televisa
