Associated Press, "TAM Brazil Crash Death Toll Reaches 189, Expected to Climb"

          The pilot of an airliner that burst into flames after trying to land on a short, rain-slicked runway apparently tried to take off again, barely clearing rush-hour traffic on a major highway. The death toll rose Wednesday to 189 and could climb higher. The runway at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport has been repeatedly criticized as dangerously short. Two planes slipped off it in rainy weather just a day earlier. Pilots call it the "aircraft carrier" -- it's so short and surrounded by heavily populated neighborhoods that they're told to take off again and fly around if they overshoot the first 1,000 feet (305 meters) of runway.
          "What appears to have happened is that he (the pilot) didn't manage to land and he tried to take off again," said Capt. Marcos, a spokesman for the Sao Paulo Fire Department who would only identify himself by rank and first name in accordance with department guidelines. The plane -- a domestic flight from Porto Alegre -- cleared the airport fence and the busy highway, but slammed into a gas station and a TAM airlines building, causing an inferno. Temperatures reached 1,000 degrees Centigrade (1,830 degrees Fahrenheit) inside the plane, and officials said there was no way passengers could have survived.
          "All of a sudden I heard a loud explosion, and the ground beneath my feet shook," said Elias Rodrigues Jesus, a TAM worker, who was walking nearby when he saw the jet explode. "I looked up and I saw a huge ball of fire, and then I smelled the stench of kerosene and sulfur." TAM Linhas Aereas SA said 186 were on the Airbus A320 -- 162 passengers, 18 TAM employees and a crew of six -- and officials said three bodies of people killed on the ground had been recovered. There were fears of more dead on the ground, with 14 others taken to hospitals, where their conditions were not known. Ninety badly charred bodies, along with the "black box" flight data recorder, had been pulled from the wreckage by midmorning, firefighters said.

Learn more about the TAM Airlines July 2007 runway crash and the rights of families of victims of the crash.