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The World's Worst AirlineA TAM plane crashed in Brazil Tuesday. I wasn't surprised.

By Elizabeth Spiers
Posted Thursday, July 19, 2007, at 5:03 PM ET
A TAM Linhas Aereas SATAM airlines plane. Click image to expand.

TAM Linhas Aereas is the worst airline in the world. I've been saying that repeatedly since early April, when my boyfriend and I took a short vacation in Brazil and returned happy with our stay but traumatized by the air travel. So Tuesday, when a TAM Linhas Aereas Airbus A320 on an inbound domestic route skidded off the São Paulo airport runway, tried to take off again, and crashed into a cargo building owned by the same carrier, exploding on impact and incinerating nearly 200 people, I felt angrily (and OK, smugly) justified in my condemnation.

It's not entirely TAM's fault it's a terrible airline; it's also Brazil's fault. And Tuesday's horrible accident illustrates why. Click here for an account of a typical TAM flight.

We flew TAM from New York to São Paulo and then to Manaus, back to São Paulo then to Rio, back to São Paulo again, then back to New York, all in the space of nine days—an itinerary that would have been brutal even without complications—and every single flight was delayed by several hours or canceled. My boyfriend, who's been a travel writer for more than 15 years and has landed on runways consisting mostly of grass, with a cinderblock terminal building and the local welcoming party covered in nothing but mud and chicken feathers, still insists that TAM was the worst air travel experience he's ever had.

Some of the delays were bureaucratic and intrinsic to TAM, but many of them were intrinsic to the state-run airports and caused by the difficulty of managing foot traffic in relatively small terminals that were not designed to handle the number of travelers they were getting—a number that has increased exponentially with Brazil's Rio-centric tourist boom.

In many cases, the semblance of order was considered just as good as actual order, and the most obvious manifestation of this pseudo-organization is the creation of neat, orderly lines of people. Passengers are kept in line, literally and figuratively. For our part, this often meant standing in line for an hour in order to be allowed to stand in another line, which in turn led to another line, which was, if we were lucky, the actual ticketing line. Then there was the security line, the boarding line, and sometimes another security line, in case the first one missed the inevitable bottle of breast milk or tube of hair gel the would-be terrorist might use to hijack a plane.

Standing in line was second only to waiting while receiving no new information as the quintessential experience of Brazilian air travel. After finally boarding a flight from Manaus to São Paulo, we sat for several hours and were served dinner by the flight crew—perhaps out of concern that the passengers would begin feeding on each other if left alone much longer, but mostly to compensate for not being able to update the passengers lest they grow mutinous. When it was manifestly clear that everyone had forced themselves to eat, perhaps fearing an overnight stay on the Manaus tarmac, we were told to disembark because the flight was canceled. More than an hour later, the luggage arrived.

Not content to leave the airport without one last episode of standing in line, we queued to get vouchers for the designated hotel, grandiosely named the "Taj Mahal," which in giant faux gold letters affixed to the entrance declared itself to be a five-star establishment—because no one else would possibly declare it as such—and featured a revolving rooftop restaurant with an Astroturf floor that creaked slowly clockwise to give diners a 360-degree view of Manaus' more colorful Dumpsters. After our scenic breakfast in motion the next morning, we arrived several hours early at the airport, stood in line for the requisite half-day, and waited expectantly to be told that our flight was delayed. We were not disappointed.

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Elizabeth Spiers is a writer who lives in New York. She can be reached at .
Photograph of plane by Evaristo Sa/Agence France-Presse.
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Remarks from the Fray Editor:

Reader response was overwhelmingly negative to this article. Elizabeth Spiers responded to her critics in this thread. Many readers distinguished between the troubles of Brazil's travel infrastructure and the service quality of TAM, offering counter-anecdotes of good experiences with the airline.—G.A.

Remarks from the Fray:

When I saw there was an article suggesting TAM is the worst airline in the world, coming on the heels of the recent crash, I expected to hear about maintenance issues, previous close calls, poor training practices, or something else which would suggest that the crash was the result of systematic problems. Instead I read an article consisting entirely of anecdotes about poor route planning and customer service.

Customer service and safety are not the same thing. While both can suffer if there is a lack of money or poor administration, they can also be opposing concerns. Stopping a plane from taking off due to a possible mechanical issue inconveniences passengers, but it may prevent an incident. Similarly, matching bags to passengers, diverting or delaying in marginal weather conditions, and not installing extensive entertainment systems can improve safety at a customer service cost.

The complaints about the Brazilian airport authorities would affect any airline flying into Brazil, and many runways in North America are as short.

The causes of the crash will be uncovered, and if there are systemic problems at TAM which led to it, they will be discovered. But I think that the public isn't well served by articles which make accusations based on anecdotes.

--carolynthered

(To reply, click here.)

I always fly TAM and always had the best services. One time, TAM changed our flight from one airport to the other and they tried to contact us and couldn't. When we got to the airport we found out our flight was leaving from another airport. TAM provided all the assistance to make sure we got to the right airport on time for that flight and when we arrived in Congonhas there were several TAM agents to almost get us out of the plane and got our luggage and took us to Guarulhos to catch our flight back here. Now, that's customer service. Last year we're 10 minutes late to catch a Delta flight from Rio to Us and Delta agents did not allow us to board even though the plane was still sitting out there, probably because they had already given our seats to somebody else.

--viviane

(To reply, click here.)

The reason that most TAM flights go through Sao Paulo is the same reason that most Delta flights go through Atlanta, American flights go through Dallas, and Continental flights go through Houston. That is their hub and that is where they pick up most of the clientele.

--bms

(To reply, click here.)

I got married back in October, and we spent our two-week honeymoon in Brazil. It could have been a travel nightmare because we packed in a lot of different destinations . All of our seven flights on TAM were within five minutes of on time - I was very impressed.

I loved the comparatively lesser hassle of Brazilian security. I think it would have been easy to wander on to the wrong plane, but I loved that we didn't have to arrive two hours before the scheduled departure time to have all of stuff x-rayed. I found that liberating.

I also thought the flight attendants were extremely helpful to a couple like us who spoke really no Portuguese. I found it a little odd that all of the people behind the counter for every airline in every airport we landed in were women, but maybe that's a cultural thing.

Also - the writer didn't mention much about the planes themselves. Compared to planes in the U.S., I thought TAM's were uniformly newer, cleaner and more spacious. I also appreciated the free cachaca we enjoyed on more than one long flight.

If I ever go back to Brazil, I won't hesitate to book on TAM.

--Seu Jorge

(To reply, click here.)

Having literally just flown TAM from New York to Sao Paulo, my experience was somewhat different than the author's. All of my six flights left no more than 15 minutes after scheduling and all arrived on time, as did all of our luggage. The lines were no different than any other international flight.

In New York, TAM was kind enough to accommodate my belated request that my party of four sit in the same row. In Sao Paulo, TAM's gate workers were kind enough to notice that we were traveling with a baby and bumped us to the front of the connecting line, a practice which was repeated for the return legs. TAM's flight attendants were even kind enough to remind passengers that reclining all the way back while the person behind was trying to eat was rude.

If TAM had problems, they were not evident to me. Brazil has problems, however, most notably that one must fly through Sao Paulo to get anywhere else in Brazil and that U.S. citizens need a visa. But those are actually George W. Bush's fault, as Brazil has enacted these measures in retaliation for Bush's treatment of Brazilians. Neither situation applied during Clinton's term. And Brazil's internal labor and traffic control problems are well documented, neither of which affected my flights.

--Rebelde

(To reply, click here.)

(7/21)

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