After watching the country’s air crisis from a distance while his Defense Minister, Air Force commander and flight controllers digladiated and brought Brazil’s commercial aviation to its knees, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva decided to intervene in the chaos.
And started by firing Paulo Roberto Cardoso Vilarinho, the Air Space Control Department (Decea) chief, the man in charge of all the air traffic control centers in the country. The cleaning up included the Decea’s second in command, vice-director major brigadier Ailton dos Santos Pohlmann.
While there is talk in Brasília that Defense Minister Waldir Pires is next in the line of sacking he is still being backed by the government since the firing decision published in the Diário Oficial (Daily Gazette) this Friday, November 24, sported his signature.
Vilarinho’s decision to quarter Brasília’s controllers preventing them from leaving the control tower for days when they staged a work-to-rule campaign, earlier this month, coupled with his opposition to a bigger role for civilians in the Brazilian air controlling structure made his continuance in the post untenable. Flight controllers have been staging a not so-silent rebellion against him.
To temporarily fill up the two vacated positions were chosen major-brigadier Paulo Hortênsio Albuquerque Silva, the chief of the Third Comar (Regional Air Command) and major-brigadier Ramon Borges Cardoso, who was serving as chief of cabinet for Air Force commander, Luiz Carlos Bueno, another man who has been at odds with the Defense Minister.
Minister Pires and just-fired Vilarinho have something in common though: both agree that the Brazilian air space has no blind spots. Something that the air controllers vehemently dispute.
In testimonies given the Federal Police in the last few days 13 flight controllers insisted that Brazil not only has a blind zone, it has what they called a "blind, deaf and mute" zone in the Amazon, an area in which no contact is possible between the control tower and airplanes.
On another aerial front, the Military Justice’s general prosecutor, Giovanni Rattacaso accused the president of the Air Traffic Controllers Brazilian Association, Wellington Rodrigues, of promoting "terrorism" in order to hide mistakes made by air controllers in the case involving Brazil’s worst air accident ever, the collision between a Boeing 737 and a Legacy executive jet, that resulted in the death of the 154 people inside the Boeing.
Rattacaso is in charge of investigating the investigations being made by the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) on possible mistakes made by their own personnel, since air control in Brazil is an attribution of the FAB.
According to Rattacaso, Rodrigues was the Cindacta’s 1 (Brasília’s Air Control Center) supervisor on September 29, the day the Boeing tragedy occurred, but he wasn’t at his post at the time of the accident.
Rattacaso says that he has reason to believe that the work-to-rule campaign unleashed just before the All Souls Day holiday (November 2), was planned by Rodrigues to "divert the attention from his conduct in the case, imputing the accident to an air control system mistake." And adds: "He is involved in this case and there is also evidence that he is guilty."
Rodrigues says in his defense that the day of the accident he was only working as instructor of novice air controllers and vows to sue the prosecutor for what he calls groundless charges.
