When things get out of hand…
What happened yesterday in the National University of Honduras (where I study) is the proof of what happens when things go too far…3 weeks later… Is it ever gonna end?
Honduras: Democracy at stake
Toncontin is back!
Just a few minutes ago the President’s Private Secretary, Raul Valladares announced that, 36 days after the accident, Toncontin will finally be reopened!
This week, some of the pressure groups that have been involved called out to the citizens of Tegucigalpa to protest against the closure by stopping their cars for five minutes at 10 am and 3 pm.
And finally last night, in a news show, the transcript from the flight 390 black box was presented and it apparently demonstrated that the pilot and copilot underestimated the warnings from the air traffic control tower…releasing the airport from blame.
But still after that, the president seemed unwilling to give up. Earlier today he went to the American Embassy’s 4th of July Celebration and apparently continued with his position of keeping it closed to Type C and D flights.
At first my mom told me that Mel Zelaya had decided to keep the airport closed and that was his last word, and that was what the Secretary was saying… and since I got too late to her room I couldn’t hear what he said. But we changed channels and they were screaming (yes, really!), saying that the airport was finally open… but until Palmerola was ready, after that it would be closed for C and D flights. But they have to have both the new airport and the new road to Comayagua ready, not just the airport. Which for me, makes all the sense in the world…
I’m so glad that he finally stopped being stubborn. I was getting worried about my grandmother returning from the States… We would have been forced to go pick her up to San Pedro Sula and that was going to be, not-less-than 1,500 lempiras (about $80. Ok, maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a ridiculous expense when we live 2 miles away from Toncontin.)
And still talking about the airport
Wait, we knew that already…
Ok, ok…. for what I understand, the airlines will have to use smaller aircrafts if they want to land in Tegucigalpa… Sadly, I don’t hear anything about fixing the airport, just forcing the airlines to use different planes… and obviously, making Palmerola’s Base, the new airport…
Now, hear me out… I’m not against it… I think it’s a good thing to do! But, come on! How long will that take? It won’t be finished in 2 months like he claims! At least not a decent one… I can even imagine the people arriving to a bunch of tents!
And the road to Palmerola… that’s another thing! When will that be over?
It’s ridiculous that he’s nearly forcing all the big international airlines to stop coming to Tegucigalpa…
I have to be honest, I’m worried! Soon after the inauguration ceremony I knew I’ve made a mistake voting for him… But right now, is really really REALLY embarrassing to know that I actually helped a bit in this mess!
So, What happened with the airport?
One week after the plane…
So I’ve been missing mostly due to the lack of something interesting to blog about… I’m off from school for two weeks and there’s not much to do… some knitting and frogging (unraveling), some jewelry making, a bit of cooking and lots of airplane-related conversations….
At the moment is still close to big aircrafts… and the plan of moving it to Palmerola is still quite strong… For me it’s a terrible idea… and for quite a lot of people, but the president is not accepting his mistake… Lots of people are struggling now that all of the flights are landing in La Mesa (San Pedro Sula) Airport, but the government seems to be ignoring this fact…
The president of the congress said the other day that he didn’t care about the financial losses that the companies around the airport were suffering, that he only cared about the human lives… but I wonder, what about the lives of the employees? Of those that depend on the tips that the visitors, that arrive to Toncontin, give them. I’m guessing those lives aren’t as important…
Yesterday, the maleteros (the guys that offer to carry the luggage, i don’t know the correct word…) went to a meeting with the Major of Tegucigalpa, Ricardo Alvarez, along with other groups that are also having problems because of the closing of the aiport and in an interview their representative informed that their union had decided to send a group of them to San Pedro Sula’s Airport for seven days and the money they made would be shared among all of them and then another group will be sent.
I hope that the president realizes that he has taken the wrong decision and that it is not wise to act on impulse. If the airport was as dangerous as the government is claiming, I honestly don’t think that important airlines would let their planes land in Toncontin and it would have been shut years ago.
As for the airplane, well, it’s still there… and that is a whole different mess… causing huge problems with the traffic and angry people everywhere, specially the people that lives and works near the area where the plane crashed… because they said they were going to take up to 45 days to remove it… now, since they started to protest about it, they’ve said that they will take two weeks, but I passed by the area today and the plane is still there… and I don’t see much difference from the pictures from the day of the accident…
Tegucigalpa throughout disaster
Well, We’ve certainly had a couple of really difficult days lately…
Yesterday (Thursday 29th), it rained all day… and in the afternoon, when I finally watched the news I found out that it was because there was a hurricane (Hurricane Alma) getting close to Honduras from the Pacific Ocean… Quite scary…
Tegucigalpa was on yellow alert for most of the night, but apparently it changed during the night, because the news papers were quite scandalous… Thankfully, by the time I woke up, the hurricane had gone from a hurricane to a tropical depression…
But I’m guessing that bad things never come alone… I left for school at 9:30 am and about half an hour later, as I was parking at a café, my phone started ringing… it was my dad, to ask me what road I had used…(I tend to use the Anillo Periferico as I find it faster or at least the cars move at a faster pace… As opposed to the Boulevard of the Armed Forces, that as it might be supposedly closer to everywhere it does move far slower… ) So obviously I tell my dad that I took the Anillo and he then tells me that there has been an airplane crash on the road that I should have used to get to the boulevard of the armed forces…
I must say that I, still, am awestruck, the images are heartbreaking…
The Toncontin Airport is known as a very dangerous airport as it has a small runway and the landing is always quite bumpy. Though the last accident was almost over 11 years ago. So, it’s not as bad as many people make it seem. What I consider to be the biggest problem here, is how the government keeps stalling the plans that they apparently have to improve the runway, to make it larger.
According to what the news are saying everywhere, the airplane (Flight 390) attempted to land once, but couldn’t (bear in mind that, even if the hurricane was now a tropical depression we still have some rain), and tried again and landed too late and wasn’t able to stop on time.
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This is being written two days later…
Since I didn’t have Internet since the day of the accident because of it, I left the post unfinished and until today it seems to be working properly.
For what I’ve been told, the plane is still there… Though the technicians of Taca have removed the so-famous black box from the plane.
The death toll remains the same as of Friday (5), thanks god!
Among them, the President of the Banco Centroamericano De Integracion Economica, Harry Brautigam who died of heart failure shortly after leaving the plane; The wife of the Brazilian Ambassador Brian Michael Fraser Neele, Janneth Shantall; The pilot César D’Antonio. The other two, weren’t on the plane but on a car that was passing through the area at the moment of the accident. They were students of the UNAH (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras) and UTH (Universidad Tecnologica de Honduras).
Almost 80 people were injured, though most of them have already left the hospitals.
Among the passengers were also an Argentinean Tango group “Compañía Viejo Barrio de Argentina”, that was going to perform that very night at the II Festival Rotario de Música. And that, amazingly enough, did present their show, with clear bruises in their faces but obviously rejoiced after the initial shock.
Now the situation is a bit messy, with the president acting without much thought, and saying that the airport will be immediately closed to big aircrafts and that these will be sent to the Soto Cano base in Comayagua. To me, it doesn’t make much sense to act like this on pure desperation, for starters the Soto Cano base (Palmerola) is not ready to receive commercial air traffic, and the situation on the Toncontin Airport is not as desperate as it appears. Hopefully they will analize the current situation and act not upon desperation as it usually happens in my country… (like it happened with the famed stickers…) but on well considered and discussed plans.
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