By DPA
Rio de Janeiro : After the tragic plane crash, which killed around 200 in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo on Tuesday, the Brazilian government has come into the firing line.
Government-owned airport operator Infraero was guilty of 'mass murder', said aviation expert Gianfranco Betting.
However, the accident in Sao Paulo is only the climax of a series of crises, which began in September 2006 with another plane crash, which killed 155.
"Since then, we've all been wondering: when is the next accident due?" leader writer Eliane Cantanhede wrote in Wednesday's edition of daily Folha de Sao Paulo.
Brazilians have been convinced for a long time that in South America's largest country hell is in the air, not below ground.
For months they have been watching the same airport scenes all over: people are fainting in long queues, while other passengers are protesting with whistles and clown noses and the most angry among them even seize runways.
Up to 50 percent of all flights have been affected by several hours of delays and cancellations, while countless compensation claims have been filed and an inquiry commission has been set up.
Air traffic controllers, who had been pilloried after the first accident and countered with strikes and work to rule, were telling true horror stories.
The president of the air traffic controllers' union, Carlos Trifilio, said there were "stutterers and people hard of hearing" among the controllers.
There was also a massive "blind area" above the Amazon rainforest, in which planes could not be controlled at all from the ground.
Influential writer Cantanhede thinks that the Brazilian air traffic's last morsel of credibility has expired with the latest crash.
"Congonhas is Brazil's most overstrained airport and has not really been operational for decades. The government, the airforce, Infraero, the airlines, everybody knew this, but everybody was waiting for the worst. Now it has happened," she said.
Aviation expert Ivan Sant'Anna described the situation as "dramatic." Sao Paulo needed a new airport in a 50-kilometre distance from the city centre, he said.
"Air traffic is growing four times as fast as the economy, and the government barely invests anything," the president of the air transport workers' association, Uebio da Silva, said.
Betting and others criticized the fact that the Congonhas runway had been cleared for use after 45 days of improvement work although it allegedly lacked adequate drainage.
Neighbours of the airport meanwhile announced a new initiative to shut down Congonhas.
"I suddenly saw a huge fireball from my window. This is worse than war, we live in constant fear," housewife Daisy Oliveira said with tears in her eyes.
While air traffic in Brazil has virtually doubled over the past 15 years – passenger numbers increased by 15 per cent to 83 million in 2005 alone – the number of air traffic controllers has been reduced from 3,200 down to 2,600 over the same period.
A majority of them are air force corporals, who earn a maximum 3,200 reais (1,700 dollars) per month. Their training has also been reduced, and only a tenth of them speak acceptable English.
The air traffic controllers complain they are overburdened.
"Often they burst out in tears in the middle of work," a member of the air force said.
Many demand they be detached from military control, as is common in most other countries.
The controllers' dissatisfaction has so far been suppressed in the barracks, reports say.
Radar equipment and radio transmitters are outdated, critics say.
Investment went into making airports look better on the outside, while runways were neglected.
Experts already saw Brazil as a high-risk country in international comparison as far as boarding a plane was concerned, the news magazine Istoe reported.
President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, however, only recently rejected the action by air traffic controllers as "terrorism."
"The military have told me we had one of the best air traffic control systems worldwide," he said.