More air traffic safety, Argentina-style

here's a follow up to my post from friday and from another post back in march...

friday...

Two months after a bolt of lightning wrecked the radar at Argentina's main international airport, pilots and air-traffic controllers say the government response has been too slow and passenger safety is at risk.

today's wapo...

Argentina's radar problem has provoked the loudest calls for action. Although manually guiding aircraft landings is still standard procedure in many parts of the world -- including large parts of Russia and China -- it is less common in major urban centers. It also requires staff to be specially trained and the rate of air traffic to be reduced, said Marc Baumgartner, president of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers' Associations.

Asking controllers to abruptly switch from radar-guided direction to manual methods without properly training them is, he said, "like asking the check-in agent to fly the aircraft."

[...]

Argentina's Ministry of Defense, which oversees all air traffic control, continues to play down such fears. Defense Minister Nilda Garré said Thursday that Spain plans to lend a radar system to Argentina until it installs a permanent replacement later this year.

[...]

Enrique Piñeyro, whose 2006 documentary, "Air Force, Incorporated," detailed numerous flaws in Argentina's air traffic control system. One day after the documentary hit theaters here, President Néstor Kirchner announced that he would replace military oversight of air traffic with civilian control. The switchover still hasn't happened, though officials promise it will in the coming months.

last march i posted on piñeyro's documentary...

last year, wanting to see a movie but not seeing anything playing that i liked, i stumbled into a documentary about civil aviation in argentina, called fuerza area s.a. (air force, incorporated)... as a regular flier in and out of buenos aires, i was horrified... this little snippet from the movie web site gives you some of the background but, naturally, nothing like the impact of the movie...

In this documentary the director shows the behind-the-scenes of the disastrous state of civil aviation in Argentina. Much of this is due to the inexplicable situation in which civil aviation is entirely militarized and under total control of the Air Force since the last military coup thirty years ago. Argentina is the only country with this rare privilege.

With hidden cameras in the control tower and 3D animations to convey the true version of two fatal air crashes in Argentina, the director (an aircraft accident investigator himself) makes his point on how corruption within the Air Force is directly affecting air safety. We see and understand many incredible close calls of aircraft on the verge of a fuel emergency and almost hit by rockets, and the recordings of their real conversations. Television footage depicting corruption of Air Force officials poses a strong warning on would be accidents.

and i also posted on this...

Pilots at Argentina's largest domestic airline, Austral, ended a short strike late on Thursday over a faulty radar system after the government guaranteed the safety of air traffic control.

The unionized pilots had said the radar system was not showing the exact coordinates of planes landing at or leaving the country's two biggest airports, both in the Buenos Aires area -- a claim disputed by [Defense Minister Nilda Garre].

Aeropuerto Internacional Ezeiza, Buenos Aires

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