Anger mounts over Brazil's deadliest air crash

SAO PAULO (AFP) - Rescuers on Thursday pulled charred bodies from the burned out wreckage of Brazil's deadliest air disaster, amid angry accusations that airport safety concerns had been ignored.

All 186 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus 320 were believed to have died in Tuesday's crash at Sao Paulo's Cagonhas airport, along with a number of people on the ground.

The Tam Airlines flight had careened off the slick runway upon landing in driving rain, skidded across a crowded avenue and slammed into a warehouse where it exploded in a fireball.

It was "a tragedy waiting to happen," said Cezar Britto, president of The Order of Lawyers of Brazil, echoing opposition and national media criticism of precarious conditions at the airport.

"What exploded in Cagonhas was not just the TAM airbus and almost 200 victims but the credibility of the Brazilian aviation system," Britto said.

Cagonhas is notorious for a runway some officials consider too short and which pilots say becomes slick when wet.

"The runway was as slippery as soap," an unnamed pilot told the O Globo daily, adding that authorities should not have allowed the plane to land at in such conditions.

By the early morning hours of Wednesday, rescuers said they had pulled 181 bodies from the twisted metal of the plane and surrounding warehouse rubble. Three of the bodies were found inside the Tam Express building that was struck by the plane.

One of the aircraft's black boxes was recovered.

Five people were still listed as missing and eleven people were in hospital with injuries, four of them in a critical state, the rescuers said.

"There is no sign of survivors," TAM President Marco Antonio Bologna said at a news conference.

There have been a number of incidents of planes skidding off the tarmac at the airport, including one the day before Tuesday's crash.

The main runway had been resurfaced last month, but more work was scheduled for September to build grooves into the surface to allow for better water drainage.

"Control tower operators had warned the runway should be closed because it didn't have 'grooving,' but no one in the government wanted to hear about it," said Sergio Olivera, who heads the Federation of Air Controllers.

The Justice Ministry said it had ordered an investigation to establish whether the runway met technical and legal security standards.

Brazil's airway infrastructure came under fresh scrutiny after the September crash of a Gol airliner with 154 people on board in the Amazon jungle. The plane had collided with a small jet in an incident blamed on a deficient air traffic control system.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of national mourning as world leaders conveyed their condolences over Tuesday's crash.

The victims included two French nationals, an Argentine and a Peruvian.

Pope Benedict XVI expressed his sorrow, saying he prayed "for strength and comfort for the injured and for those affected by the tragedy."

France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA) said it was sending two of its investigators and that its German counterpart, the BFU, was sending another two. Five Airbus experts also were on their way.

Located just a few kilometers from Sao Paulo's city center, Congonhas is Latin America's busiest airport, with an average of 630 daily landings and take-offs. It is mainly used for flights from other parts of Brazil and South America.

In February, a local judge banned the use of the airport by Fokker 100, Boeing 737-800 and Boeing 737/700 jetliners, but the ruling was overturned by an appeals court.

TAM's president declined to give an opinion on the runway's condition, saying he would await the outcome of investigations "to know what was the real cause of the accident."