By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 6 2007 (IPS)

Brazil’s air transport crisis, caused by an air traffic controllers’ strike, is not yet over. The crisis has also opened up two additional battle fronts for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: discontent among the military, and the looming threat of a parliamentary inquiry.

The Brazilian Air Traffic Controllers’ Association (ABCTA) announced a sort of truce on Thursday, allaying fears of a repetition over the Good Friday and Easter holidays of the flight delays and cancellations that brought chaos to Brazilian airports last weekend.

ABCTA president Welington Rodrigues “apologised” in writing to the public for the inconveniences caused by the five-hour national air controllers’ strike on Mar. 30, and promised his members would respect the government and military “hierarchy and discipline.” Most air traffic controllers are sergeants in the air force, so their strikes are viewed as tantamount to rebellion.

But the “rebellion,” according to Rodrigues, should be taken as “a cry for help,” because the problems with air traffic control have not been solved, and passengers’ lives depend on their satisfactory resolution. During the strike, a group of controllers complained about poor working conditions, inadequate equipment, threats received and military punishments meted out to them.

Rodrigues’ conciliatory open letter does not erase the conflicts nor the feelings of betrayal that the strike left behind in different parties. Controllers said they had been betrayed by President Lula and Planning Minister Paulo Bernardo, who promised that the strikers would not be punished and that their posts would soon be placed under civilian control, in order to ensure that flights would resume this Friday.

During negotiations to end the strike, the president countermanded air force orders to imprison strikers, over the head of its commander, Brigadier Juniti Saito, who has threatened to resign.

The argument that Lula, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, can issue orders without disrupting the chain of command caused grave concern among the ranks of the military. Lula had to meet with the commanders, condemn the air traffic controllers’ strike as “irresponsible,” and revoke the promises he had made them.

Now at least 18 controllers are facing military justice proceedings, and could be discharged or imprisoned, after a 40-day inquiry. The unknown possible reactions of their colleagues add to the uncertainty about the future of air transport, which has suffered disruption, delay and cancellation of flights since October.

The extent of the shortcomings in Brazil’s air safety system was revealed when two planes collided in mid-air over the Amazon in mid-September. All 154 passengers on a Gol Airways jetliner died. The other plane, a light aircraft, only suffered slight damage and was able to land on a jungle airstrip.

A subsequent inquiry cast suspicion on the possible responsibility of air controllers for the accident, and triggered a decision in late October by traffic controllers to monitor fewer planes each, causing thousands of passengers to spend hours in line at airports.

Gradually the conditions in which air traffic controllers had to work came to light. According to the ABCTA there are some 2,300 controllers, 80 percent of whom are in the military, the air force said.

It is now also clear that removing air traffic control personnel from the sphere of the military, a longstanding demand of controllers, will be a difficult, lengthy task that could take many years, according to experts, and cost billions of dollars.

The air traffic control system introduced in Brazil during the 1970s was, and remains, part of the country’s air defences. Flight movements are monitored from Integrated Air Defence and Air Traffic Control Centres; their name reflects their military origin. It will not be easy to separate the safety of commercial flights from the integrated system as it now stands.

Lula’s promise to immediately demilitarise 1,500 air force sergeants and non-commissioned officers working as flight controllers has been postponed indefinitely. The controllers’ work depends on a number of military services, such as telecommunications and radar systems to monitor air space.

The system is a legacy from the military regime that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, a story repeated in many Latin American countries. Argentina, too, is trying to put its air traffic control under civil authority after frequent near-misses and errors.

On top of this problem, which requires a gradual, long-term solution, and the foreseeable conflicts and negative reactions from military personnel unwilling to lose one of their functions, the worsening of the airports crisis makes it almost impossible for the Lula administration to avoid a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (PCI), which is being insisted upon by the opposition.

The motion to set up a PCI was defeated in the Chamber of Deputies, but the opposition took the case to the Supreme Court, which should rule on the legitimacy of the parliamentary inquiry by the end of April.

If the PCI is approved, it will create additional difficulties for the government, as parliamentary investigations tend to monopolise political and legislative attention, thus delaying the approval of laws that the government wishes to pass.

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