Prosecutors try to close Sao Paulo airport after Brazil's worst plane crash

SAO PAULO, Brazil — A TAM jet pulled out of an attempted landing Thursday at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport, and federal prosecutors sought a court order to shut down the entire airport — Brazil's busiest — until the investigation into this week's crash that killed at least 189 people was completed.

The air force, meanwhile, released video of Tuesday's landing prior to the crash, which shows Flight 3054 from Porto Alegre coming in much faster than other planes that were landing at the same time.

The TAM jet that aborted its landing was rerouted to Sao Paulo's international airport after coming in at an unsafe angle Thursday to Congonhas, the nation's airport authority Infraero said.

Critics have condemned the government for failing to invest in safety measures adopted by other urban airports. Tuesday night's crash, Brazil's second major air disaster in less than a year, killed all 186 people on the plane and three others on the ground. Eleven other people were hospitalized.

Late Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked for a court order to shut down Congonhas. It was unclear when judges would rule on the request about the airport that lies in the heart of Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city.

Doing so would likely create huge problems for civil aviation throughout Latin America's largest nation because Congonhas is a key hub, but prosecutors called the move essential to ensuring air safety.

"It is necessary to temporarily paralyze the activities at the Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo until a complete renovation of both of its runways can be completed and there is certainty that they are fully secure," prosecutors said in a statement.

But Jose Carlos Pereira, who heads Infraero, said closure of the airport would be "radical" and unjustified. He noted the runway where the plane crashed will be reopened only after a complete inspection.

"It's not a matter of shutting down the airport or opening indiscriminately. We have operated thousands of times under heavy rain and nothing has happened," Pereira said.

At least 181 bodies had been retrieved from the site where the Airbus-320 crashed Tuesday in a heavy rain, igniting a fireball. The plane slammed into a TAM airlines building after narrowly clearing the airport's perimeter fence and rush-hour traffic on a surrounding highway.