The true story behind ‘A Tragedy Foretold: Flight 3054’

If reading the news doesn’t have you anxious about air travel, Netflix’s A Tragedy Foretold: Flight 3054 might do the trick.

Directed by Angelo Defanti, the three-part documentary unpacks the chilling story of Flight 3054’s 2007 crash at Brazil’s notorious Congonhas Airport. The accident, one of the most horrific (and preventable) aviation disasters in South American history, resulted in nearly 200 deaths. The series explores not just the crash itself, but frames it against the aviation crisis that gripped Brazil during this period.

“This airport has always been a challenging airport for pilots to navigate,” says a pilot of Congonhas in the below teaser. “Its reputation has always been bad. And it was getting even worse, some people would say.”

The documentary arrives in a year that’s already seen a succession of stories about airline crashes and mishaps, raising concerns about airline safety. Max’s second season of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, which premiered this past Sunday, is also centered around the topic. Truly, there’s something in the air.

Keep scrolling to learn more about the real-life events that inspired the Flight 5034 documentary.

What happened to TAM Airlines Flight 3054?

On the evening of July 17, 2007, a TAM Airlines’ domestic passenger flight from Porto Alegre ended in tragedy when the plane crashed while touching down at São Paulo’s Congonhas Airport. The Airbus A320-233 aircraft skidded off the runway, careened over a nearby freeway, and crashed into a TAM warehouse that neighbored a petrol station, resulting in an explosion.

All 187 passengers and crew members onboard Flight 3054 died, as did an additional 12 people on the ground. It’s among the deadliest aviation accidents in South American history.

What caused Flight 3054’s crash?

Flight 3054’s crash was a perfect storm of factors, including overlooked safety issues, underfunding, overcrowding, weather, training deficiencies, and infrastructural problems, among others.

Many of these factors are cited in the official investigation results from Brazil’s Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA), while others were voiced by those familiar with the airport and its bad reputation.

Below is more about a few, but not all, of the main factors in the crash.

A short, slippery runway

While there’s little in the official investigation report about the length of the runway, it was routinely mentioned in news beats and interviews at the time of the crash, as well as in the teaser for Netflix’s upcoming series.

As the L.A. Times noted at the time, Congonhas’ runway measured 6,362 feet, making it nearly 700 feet shorter than the runway at LaGuardia Airport in New York. Per the outlet, pilots likened it to landing on an aircraft carrier, and were told to “take off again and fly around if they overshoot the first 1,000 feet of runway.”

In fact, an early hypothesis involved the pilot doing this very thing.

“What appears to have happened is that he [the pilot] didn’t manage to land and he tried to take off again,” a fire department spokesman told CNN at the time.

Furthermore, the runway was lacking grooves to slough off rainwater. The runway had been recently resurfaced, but the grooves had not yet been installed.

“The main runway of Congonhas presented, during a long time, a low coefficient of friction and irregularities on its surface which favored the accumulation of water,” reads the CENIPA report.

The day before the crash, several pilots reported poor braking conditions and an ATR 42-300 aircraft was damaged after hydroplaning, per local reports. Despite rainy conditions on the day of the crash, the runway remained open.

An overcrowded location

Another criticism of Congonhas Airport was that it was tucked in the middle of a dense cityscape, making its short runway that much more dangerous.

“Congonhas has no escape area,” a voice explains in the series’ teaser. “The runway ends and there is nowhere to go — either you fall down below, or off to one side or the other.”

This sentiment was also expressed by a Times of London reporter to CNN back in 2007.

Flying into Congonhas, he said, “is like you are literally flying past people’s living rooms in apartment blocks. Then you land on the runway. It is completely surrounded by the central part of Sao Paulo city. This is not an airport out on the edge of the city. This is right in the city.”

A woman’s voice in the teaser echoes this, saying, “They fly by my window. I could wave to the captain if I wanted to.”

Poor training and communication

The CENIPA investigation also found the monitoring of the flight by ground control to be “not appropriate, since the crew did not have perception of what was happening in the moments that preceded the impact.” It adds, “This loss of situational awareness hindered the adoption of an efficient and timely corrective action.”

It also indicates that the interactive courses mandated during flight training could have been more in-depth.

“There was a perception among the crews interviewed that the training through the years and on account of the high demand resulting from the company’s growth was being abbreviated,” the report reads.

Where can I watch A Tragedy Foretold: Flight 3054?

All three episodes of A Tragedy Foretold: Flight 3054 are currently streaming on Netflix.

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