Very sad news out of Sao Paolo today. All of the other pilots here are either from Sao Paolo or Porto Alegre. Most of them have done many, many landings at the Congonhas airport, used the very same runway. The runway was built for DC-3s, not jets, so yes it was short, but still land-able. However...
Pilots may be very skilled and adept at handling tough situations, but my opinion is that the companies (airlines, airports, etc) ought to set them up for success. Make it as safe as possible, don't cut corners because your pilots are skilled enough to "get-by" and you want to save a few dollars.
Just two days ago, one of the planes in Jeff's company had mechanical problems, the computer couldn't read conditions correctly, and the airplane stalled. It dropped 3000 ft. To passengers, it may have just felt like hard tubulence. To a pilot, there was something wrong with this plane.
The environmental conditions in this part of the world cause the planes to get really dirty really fast. The sand just grinds through metal. Plane maintenance needs to be done very differently than for, say, an Alaska Airlines plane. Planes that are not regularly cleaned are covered with layers of oil which then act like a magnet to the sand. This can mess with a lot. Let's protect pilots (and passengers) and make conditions within control as safe as possible for them.
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