As promised I have gotten the ball rolling and have contacted many news and government agencies here and abroad to demand a retraction and an apology from those who had anything to do with this article. If you would like to join the march please contact them as well. This kind of journalism has to be held accountable.

Capt John

uh, since it was an opinion piece... good luck.

people don't have to retract their opinions, no matter how much you disagree with them.

Cannot hide behind opinion while being backed by such as the Washington Post. Accountability applies to all.

Well, I hate to disappoint you, but the Luis has essentially admitted that what I said about the runway is true and this morning's New York Times ran a piece stating specifically that domestic travel has been problematic for the last 10 months due to work slowdowns and air traffic control problems. See here: <link>

So whether you want to hear it from me or not, there are what you would seem to consider "officially credible" third parties saying exactly the same thing--including, for once, the Brazilian government. Also, interestingly, when the piece ran in the Post, I got an overwhelmingly positive influx of email (a good portion from Brazilians, no less), which tells you something about the pile-on effect in the Fray.

You can lobby all you want, but I'm not apologizing for my opinion just because someone's trying to bully me into it. If you don't like it, don't read my stuff. It's easy enough to scan the byline and skip it.

just for future reference, the president of Brazil is known as 'Lula'

And I find it interesting that you got this 'overwhelming influx of emails' regarding the same piece on the Post, since all the comments I saw on that site were not agreeing with you at all.

And when are you going to get through your thick skull that we're not arguing about Brazil having aviation problems, or Congonha's runway being considered short for bigger planes? We have all pretty much agreed to that, and had you written a story about THAT, we would all be praising you here!

Our gripe is with your wrong asessment that TAM is the worst airline in the world based purely on your bad experience, and your blatant disrespect to the fact that 200 people lost their lives!

I am not a bully nor am a a neophyte as you seem to think I am. In 30 years of flying and 20 of those as a Captain I fully agree with sounding the alarm at unsafe practices. I have personally sat on many committees for improvements and fought for changes in law and statutes. You probably have no clue what it takes for a US carrier to fly into any foreign destination or even a domestic one for that matter nor the very pain staking efforts by many to assure the safety of our passengers.Those who have flown with me and have been taught by me will attest to our staunch policy on safety. I have the last word when all is said and done before we leave the gate. We work as a team, unlike you that answers to no one. Except for now. You'll answer for this and I will utilize all of the many friends in very influential places to see to it that you really grasp your very childish cavalier attitude. You made a huge mistake own up to it . Additionally I don't need to lobby my friends they are all to happy to do it.

. Again and for the last time I have no issue with the facts, and making people aware of them what I do object vehemently is your blatant disrespect for the lost lives and the glib attitude you take all because you were inconvenienced. You take the "I told you so" position and then add some after facts to make your point. The real point of your article was to complain about your trip and the accident was the catalyst. Had you taken a different approach I would have applauded you.

Your condescension towards what you think as a lack of intelligence on my part only further reaffirms my thoughts about you. When you have personally sat on accident investigations and had to deal with the aftermath, sifted through wreckage, experienced the horrific scene of your coworkers and friends remains strewn across the land and dealt with the depths of despair from families torn apart, and media people who have little or no respect for anything else except their own agenda then you can speak. I have been there and continue to do so. To clarify I am an authority on these matters and as such far more credible than are you. Before you were born I was already charting new ground into new destinations far and wide. So have some respect and at the very least show a heart towards the families and learn to say I am sorry now before life teaches you a lesson the hard way.

You tell me not to read your "stuff'" then do not publish it tell me to "scan the byline and skip it" . It was there for all the world to read on the MSN homepage right where you wanted it. You are and will be held accountable.

Capt John

thanks Biketraveler. I couldn’t have said it better myself. And hats off to the Captain. Elizabeth, your article in the Post is different than what was posted here on slate. I didn’t read it closely, but i did notice a few of the factual errors were removed. Do tell, what accounts for the difference? I agree with the Captain about your attitude. Worse now you are acting like you provided some real clarity and insight before the Luiz (sic) Brazilian govt., and again it was we readers who got it wrong. that’s such BS. the article you now claim to have written was sure not what i read. btw, one of Rio’s airports has a shorter runway than Congonhas. ya basta!

This entire thread perplexes me. Elizabeth Spiers writes about her crappy experience on TAM, a jet crashes some days later-- in no small part due to the airlines' negligence, and a bunch of readers/respnders (working for TAM? from Brazil?) mow her down for her earnest commentary.

Let's get real. Two days after the crash, a story makes the national headlines about a radar crash over the Amazon (no doube similar to the one that caused Brazil's earlier crash this year). (Just google AP and Alan Glendenning, it's author.)

What piques me is exactly who are the defenders of the TAM crash responding so vociferously to Spiers piece? Tam employees? Brazilian gov't. employees? All very interesting. In this country, for all of it's faults, we don't champion defenders of airlines crashes. As political as Americans are, when a plane crashes here, politics is out the window -- the NTSB and FAA get down to business and figure out what went wrong. We have no interest in laying blame on the government (or whomever) when innocent people die in a hurtling piece of metal.

That is why there has not been a major crash in the US within the last 5 years. Brazilians, take a lesson.

Yep, 6 pages, 118 posts, maybe half of dozen of those supporting her, and we are allllll wrong! Oh no, sorry, we're alllll Brazilians working for TAM.

<link> this is from Joe Sharkey's blog. he does a good job summing up some of the major issues, and funny, he doesnt mention TAM at all!

Like the author you misinterpret many of the posters, who have stated that they don't have a problem with thoughtful, tough criticism of TAM and Brazil's airline infrastructure. But Spier's simple does not do that. She makes all kinds of errors (which have been pointed out) and if you believe that one person's awful experience is a clear sign a plane will be going down soon, then you should not fly in Brazil, the US or anywhere. True she did not mention the US. The US comparisons comes in (not because of a naive defense of the third world) because some of her analysis is so broad and focused on her customer experience, that all the conditions are fairly common here. By her analysis, one wonders why she has decided to stop flying in just Brazil. She is very correct that there are problems with Brazil's airlines etc. but does not place it into a proper context. Once again, once again, a more professional, yet very critical, article, based on evidence, interviews and research, with a more in-depth explanation on how this happens in different settings, with different regulations, would have been great (again, again as many have pointed out).

Spier's response furthermore shows her poor argumentation skills. She notes that she has been getting an overwhelmingly positive response to her Post version of the article, (I assume by email, not by the comments on the Post website.) Let's assume this true. ("Spiers you are great. The Brazilian govt. should pay you millions in consulting fees....", "Fray folks dumb" etc.) She goes on to note that this says something about the pile-on effect on the Fray. The implicit message seems to be that people on the Fray saw a negative post and like mindless sheep followed the herd. I would assume Spiers feels the same way about the comments on the Post site. So is she saying then that people who write emails are more thoughtful and perceptive? Assuming Spiers did get overwhelmingly positive emails, I really don't think it leads to many conclusions at all about the nature of people on the Fray (or the nature of the Fray) versus those who email comments. It could mean (it would be very nice) that those on the Fray are less likely than Post emailers to accept whatever is printed in a major publication. At the very least, I don't think it would fit into Spiers ideal conclusion that: the people on the Fray just thoughtlessly pile on and the people who emailed get it. Frankly, I don't think it says much at all. However it shows one of her problems, she draws very broad conclusion from very weak ambiguous data. She also calls the President, the Luis, for some odd reason (his first name, although universally called "Lula"), which conveys sloppiness on such an important issue.

Moreover, her response seems to reflect a different article than she wrote. She mainly focuses on her discussion of runways, etc. but actually more than half of her article is based on one personal experience. If her lesson for us, is that runways are too short in Sao Paulo, well that has been reported in the AP and a lot of other places. That makes me wonder why then Slate decided to print an article that essential repeated the typical AP analysis with an addition of a boring, personal story. Again, it also makes me wonder why she has not completely stopped her air travel, since short runway are in lots of places. Either way, the current analysis of the crash suggests that it might have been multiple factors, which indeed says some very troubling things about Brazil's airline industry and possibly TAM. Spiers does not go into them. It would have been more compelling if she had.

I found the tongue and cheek approach in poor taste for such a horrible crash. Evidently, that is subjective, different strokes, for different folks so I won't debate it. Honestly, I don't care if she apologizes or not. I am actually hoping the editors just do more due diligence in the future, after this article.

Your statement that you "got an overwhelmingly positive influx of email (a good portion from Brazilians, no less), which tells [us] something about the pile-on effect in the Fray" leaves me baffled. It's interesting to note that you got all these overwhelmingly positive emails yet the replies to your article are pretty much the same as here. [See here for comments: <link> ]

It's been said again and again - regardless of your (less-than-accurate) accounting of Brazil's airlines and/or problems, the posters here are incensed by your blatant statements. Those statements would be: (I'm listing them separately so you can focus clearly)

• The World's Worst Airline
• A TAM plane crashed in Brazil Tuesday. I wasn't surprised.
• 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.
• My boyfriend, .... has landed on runways consisting mostly of grass, .... and the local welcoming party covered in nothing but mud and chicken feathers, [emphasis mine] still insists that TAM was the worst air travel experience he's ever had.

Here's the point - once again - your ethnocentric 'reportage' is just plain insulting. Additionally, it's also apparently incorrect. I'm also wondering if Slate and/or the Post have fact checkers on staff. Or even spellcheckers.

Your replies are like a child's. "Well, I hate to disappoint you, but the Luis has essentially admitted that what I said about the runway is true...." What does "essentially admitted" mean? Further on the "essentially admitted" becomes "saying exactly the same thing."

If people disagree with you it's a "pile-on effect in the Fray?" Now that's interesting. You previously stated: "On the whole, even the hate mail from Slate readers is more thoughtful than the typical hate mail I got at Gawker or DealBreaker, which was invariably, no matter what the topic, "O YEH, WELL, UR A BIG SLUT!!" " So now that a majority of the replies are not aligned with you, they're now "piling-on?"

You need to be right, right? Nothing less. But the world just doesn't work that way Elizabeth.

this was a better post, and by no means going easy on brazil's air agency

the joe sharky blog is the post i was talking about above