Flying to Brazil? … not me thanks
By Robert Mark on December 7th, 2006People say pilots have no patience. That’s not really true. We just don’t have much … especially for people who seem to miss the obvious.
On another forum yesterday, someone asked whether anyone knew of problems before their company flew a business jet to Brazil. Some sharp-eyed manager caught the question immediately and told the writer to make sure the crew had two passports so they don’t end up like Joe and Jan – who BTW, still have not yet left Brazil.
“No,” the person on the other forum said. “We know about the passport thing. Is there anything operationally we should know about?”
There’s no doubt we ought to be doing what we can to get Joe and Jan out, but the real issue in that Brazil’s ATC is still quite a mess … too many planes, lousy technology and too few controllers to work in a dictatorial aviation system. Apparently there are still quite a few people who didn’t hear about the problem. In fact, pretty surprised that more airlines in the world don’t seem to have raised any concerns.TV video confirming numerous radar and radio blind spots around have been making the rounds which means there could well be more opportunties to knock another few airplanes out of the sky in Brazil. I doubt Brazilian controllers are very proficient at manual air traffic control where the separation standards are all kept in the controller’s head, which is part of the reason traffic is moving so slowly down there these days.
Even the Brazilians know it’s not safe flying in portions of Brazilian airspace.
It all makes me wonder if we’re going to need to run two more – perhaps larger – aircraft together in Brazil before anyone realizes there is a real crisis at hand.
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