| - | ACCIDENT DETAILS |
| Date: | July 17, 2007 |
| Time: | 1852 |
| Location: | Sao Paulo, Brazil |
| Operator: | TAM (Brazil) |
| Flight #: | 3054 |
| Route: | Porto Alegre - Sao Paulo |
| AC Type: | Airbus A-320-233 |
| Registration: | PR-MBK |
| cn / ln: | 789 |
| Aboard: | 187 (passengers:181 crew:6) |
| Fatalities: | 187 (passengers:181 crew:6) |
| Ground: | 12 |
| Summary: | The jet airliner crashed while attempting to land in heavy rain at Congonhas airport. The plane skidded off the end of the runway across a major roadway and struck a gas station and building, bursting into flames. The right engine had a malfunctioning reverser. In this situation, the correct procedure was for the pilot to retard both throttles to idle and then advance both throttles to reverse, as if he had no problem with the reversers. The former procedure, which was changed by Airbus, was to take both throttles to idle, and then advance just the throttle corresponding to the engine with the operating reverser. It was changed by Airbus because there had been several incidents where the pilot forgot to bring both throttles back to idle, leaving one engine reversed and the other thrusting forward. The downside to this change was it would lengthen the stopping distance. The pilot was so concerned about the short and slippery runway that he chose to switch to the old procedure and got it wrong. A contributing factor was the heavy rain and wind and the fact that the newly resurfaced runway had not had grooves installed yet. |
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