Maybe You Shouldn't Come Visit

Earlier this week, two planes nearly crashed in mid-air near Ezeiza, the location of the Buenos Aires international airport. Whoops.

The good news is that Argentina avoided a scene like this one:



The bad news is that the near crash, or "quasi collison" was not really that big of surprise. In March the Buenos Aires radar system was struck by lightning and has been largely out of commission ever since. Both the Ezeiza (international) and Jorge Newberry (domestic) airports have suffered an exceedingly high number of delays, as takeoffs are now spaced at least 10 minutes apart. Just a few days prior to this incident, the president of the Argentinian Airline Pilots Association was quoted as saying:

“Ten minutes is a good safety measure, but this means departing and landing schedules will not necessarily be respected. Instead of 20 flights to the hour, we now have five, in good weather conditions; forget about it if there’s a storm”, he added.

In a country where many (if not most) flights are routed through Buenos Aires, this has been really bad news for travelers and pilots. The above quote was part of an article detailing a warning released last week by the International Federation of Airlines Pilots Associations, asking pilots to "exercise extreme vigilance and awareness" when flying in the Buenos Aires area.

Oddly enough, just prior to the disclosure of the near-collison, Argentinian defense minister Nilda Garré had publicly guaranteed that air travel is safe and dismissed the notion of an "imminent catastrophe". Garré also confirmed that the government would soon be receiving new radar equipment on loan from Spain. She went on to state that by the end of the year there would be nine radars and that total would increase to 16 by the year 2009.

Let's hope she's right. That would mean less of this:



And more of this: