For many, yesterday’s air crash in São Paulo was an accident foretold. Pilots have long complained about conditions at Congonhas airport, saying that heavy rain makes landing on its short runway dangerous.

Just this Monday a smaller passenger jet skidded off while landing in rainy conditions similar to yesterday’s, one of a series of such incidents in recent months.

Authorities had recently closed the main runway for 45 days for resurfacing in an attempt to overcome a problem of water collecting on the surface in heavy rain, and had reopened it only at the end of last month.

Final work had not been completed because grooving, designed to aid grip in the wet, had yet to be done and its absence was a line of inquiry into Monday’s incident. Authorities had authorised the reopening of the runway without grooving.

The Government has already indicated that yesterday’s accident now puts in question the future of Congonhas, Brazil’s busiest airport and main domestic hub. Opened in the 1920s on what was then the edge of the city, it has since been swallowed up by sprawl and is a small island in a sea of concrete, surrounded on all sides by freeways and buildings.

Aviation experts have long cautioned that it was not suitable for the bigger modern jets and its location in a densely occupied urban area left pilots with no margin for error.

But airlines have increasingly lobbied for more flight slots at the airport aware that passengers prefer its convenience, located as it is near the downtown area and the city’s various financial centres. São Paulo’s other airport is almost 19 miles (30km) away and reached by a freeway that is frequently the most congested in a city infamous for gridlock.

Despite calls that use of the airport be scaled back, in the past decade alone the Government has spent more than £150 million on expanding and modernising the passenger halls to relieve congestion.

The accident — the worst in Brazil’s aviation history — comes just ten months after a Gol plane crashed after being clipped by a private jet over the Amazon, causing the loss of all 154 people on board. The investigation into that crash said the private jet's pilots held primary responsibility but also pointed to the errors of air traffic controllers.

Aware of the likely direction of the investigation Brazil’s controllers have been in dispute with the Government since. They say they are overworked and overstretched and saddled with outmoded equipment at a time when the country’s aviation sector is growing rapidly.

Last year Brazil’s civil aviation sector grew at an estimated 12 per cent, compared with 10 per cent for China’s, where economic growth is about double that of Brazil.

Since the Gol crash the controllers have embarked on a series of work-to-rules and strikes. Because air traffic controllers in Brazil are all officers in the air force, authorities treated such actions as mutiny and at times seemed more concerned with asserting military hierarchy than resolving the issues they raised.

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