Monday, July 23, 2007

Do They Ever Take Responsibility for Anything?

Ten months after the fiasco that followed the Sept. 29 crash and less than a week after the latest air disaster in Sao Paulo, Brazilian authorities have siezed on what aviation experts call a red herring to shift blame away from themselves.

As usual.

In the political fallout after last Tuesday's crash of a TAM A320 killed about 200 at Sao Paulo's Congonhas Airport, the investigation of the crash is shifting from the well-known unsafe conditions at the airport to a thrust reverser on the A320 that had been disconnected four days before the crash.

According to an Associated Press report, landing with only one reverser operating is "not unusual." Upon hearing of the thrust reverser issue, Marco Aurelio Garcia, an aide to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, made a gleeful obscene gesture for TV cameras that was seen as signaling relief that blame could be shifted to the airline.

Hey, the Americans-Turned-Off-the-Transponder ploy worked after Sept. 29 (after other feints at blame-shifting -- the infamous Aerial Maneuvers ploy and the Failure to Follow Flight Plan ploy -- failed to gain wide political traction).

So why not a thrust-reverser red herring? Whatever flies with the public.

For sure, the public is having a hard enough time flying itself in Brazil.

--end

3 comments:

Paulo X said...

What do expect from a @#*&@ of a president who has made an entire political career out of not taking responsibility for anything?

He knows nothing. He sees nothing. He hears nothing.

If the party currently in power were on the other side of the fence, be sure the streets would be packed with demonstrators demanding for heads to roll (including that of the president, I'm sure).

Tenney Naumer said...

The answer to the question in the title of this post would be a resounding, "NOOOOO!!!"

patricia m. said...

Exactly, NO, THEY DO NOT TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANYTHING. The worst government ever, just trying to make money for themselves.