The Varig 146 story

[Deleted]

Part 1

Back in 1986, we heard that Varig were thinking about replacing the Electras on what is known in Brazil as the Ponte Aérea – air bridge – between the downtown airports of Rio and Sao Paulo. The route was nominally controlled by Varig, but they shared the costs and revenue with VASP, (who amazingly were owned by the state government of Sao Paulo), and two private companies called Cruzeiro and Transbrasil.

The air bridge in its current format began in 1975. This is believed to have been the first ever shuttle operation and the only one of any significance still operating. The combined population of greater Rio and Sao Paulo is about 20 million and whilst there is a luxury bus service between the two (think Greyhound), it takes about 5 hours and is not particularly cheap. There is no train service, although there has long been talk of TGV-type operation. The distance between the two is approximately an hour's flying time.

The Electras first began operating on the route in 1962 and had given good service, but were now becoming unreliable. There were 15 aircraft and given that the operation ran from 0600 to 2300 every day (an average of 66 flights daily) and that there were departures every 15 minutes during that time, aircraft reliability was very important, since most flights were full and a cancellation caused a lot of problems. It was largely a business service, though the aircraft were in an all-economy config and flights were reduced at weekends. The airport at Santos Dumont in Rio is probably the closest to the business centre of any major city in the world. From our agent's office, which was over a major department store, it was a 10-minute walk to the airport! The banking, insurance and legal organisations all had their headquarters in the city centre.

From an operational point of view, the Electra was a good match. It was capable of a much longer range of course and had optimum seating, though the layout varied between the aircraft, because they had been bought from both American and Northwest Airlines and one from Braniff. Two of them, PP-VLA and B, previously had large freight doors.

So the process began of selecting a replacement. Three types were considered, the 146-200, the 737-300 and the F-100. We all produced studies showing how we felt the operation could continue in a similar style to the current one, with fuel burns, training and maintenance costs, etc. The F-100 was rejected at an early stage, primarily because it could not operate fully-loaded from 02R, the longer of the two Santos Dumont (SDU) runways, which was short by any measure at just 4,340 feet. (02L is even shorter at 4,200 feet). Regular discussions took place with Varig to determine how the operation would work, and what the seating config would be, the galley space, etc. Even on a short trip such as this, Varig provided a full catering service; coffee (of course!) or tea and sandwiches on the morning flights and drinks and snacks on the evening flights.

During the negotiations, there was a major fire in the terminal, (caused by a faulty ATM machine after the airport had closed apparently!), which caused a lot of damage. Fortunately, the interior was originally built from marble, so the damage could have been much worse, but it was unusable, so for a period of six months, passengers had the somewhat unusual experience of checking-in in one of the hangars.

So finally, it came down to a straight competition between the 737-300 and the BAe 146-200. Varig asked for demos of both aircraft, which caused us a bit of a problem, because we didn't have a 146 operating in South America and none were available in the US. We had already started to plan how we would get the 146 from Hatfield to Rio, which was going to take about four days, given that the 146 was built for neither range nor speed, when, out of the blue we discovered that the Queen's Flight (as it was then called), were taking an aircraft down there for a visit by Princess Anne. Discussions were held with 32 sqn at RAF Benson (where the Queen's Flight was based at the time), to see whether we could 'borrow' it for the demo. Of course it was not representative of a standard 146, but the most important thing was to show how it would cope with the short runway at SDU. A lot of protocol was involved and it eventually came down to “Well, if the Queen is OK with it, then we'll do it.” Thankfully, she was, so we set about planning the demo. The aircraft had been used by Prince Philip and his journey was finishing in Belize. Princess Anne was flying down on BA, so it was agreed that I would meet the crew in Belize and we'd take the aircraft down from there, so I could brief them on the way down. The RAF still had a presence there at the time, because the Guatemalans were causing trouble on the border, so we spent the evening in the Officer's Mess, next door to a detachment of four Harriers hiding under their camo nets! We set off the following morning, stopped in Manaus for fuel and lunch and then Brasilia for the overnight and a courtesy visit to the embassy. In the meantime, O Globo TV (the Brazilian equivalent of Sky) had heard about the impending demo and wanted to broadcast the 146s arrival live on TV. We had to adjust the timings to fit in with their schedule, but it was well worth it, given the publicity it would attract. Air Traffic Control for all aircraft in those days was handled by the military, but the Defence Attache in Brasilia had good contacts, and we were allowed to fly down Copacabana and Ipanema beaches on the way in. This gave us an opportunity to show how quiet the 146 was in comparison with its competitor. We were able to see the playback later that evening and the excitement of the commentator on our arrival was more typical of a Brazil/Argentina match than anything else!

The aircraft was then handed back to Princess Anne for a few days, which gave us a bit of breathing space to set up the demos, which are always complicated affairs. Just to complicate the issue further, we were told that a kidnap threat had been made against Princess Anne, and security would be increased, but there would be no change to her schedule. We were particularly pleased about this, as she had agreed to attend a reception we were holding for the great and good of Varig and Rio the evening after the demo and I was able to ask her to thank her mother for lending us the aircraft.


A typical scene at Santos Dumont. An Electra taxies in after the flight from Congonhas. They were never used on any other route.


Unfortunately, it isn't always bright and sunny in Rio, but that doesn't stop the operation.

The other end of the operation in Sao Paulo at Congonhas. The Air Bridge operated from a fixed area of the apron. On the right is PP-VLA - note that absence of a forward door.


A busy apron scene at Congonhas - actually, it was always busy!

Part 2 to follow...

[digit]

Great stuff

Looking forward to Part 2!

Thanks,

GC

[Deleted]

Part 2

So the day of the demo dawned. Thankfully, the weather was OK, so no problems there, but without giving too much away, there are a limited number of useful seats on the Queen's Flight aircraft, so we had to manage the invites and the seating very carefully. There is never a shortage of volunteers for demo flights, but it's obviously important that the right people get to fly on them and come off the aircraft with the right experience. We had also invited the VASP management in Sao Paulo to join us, so we had the additional headache of how to deal with them. We decided to rent a large room in Sao Paulo's downtown airport in Congonhas (CGH) and have people around to give presentations, answer questions and generally make themselves useful, so that we could entertain the Rio contingent while the VASP people had a run down to the Cidade Marvilhosa as the residents of Rio call it. It's worth mentioning that there is a certain amount of none-too-friendly rivalry between the two cities; Sao Paulo is seen as the hard-working hub of industry, whereas the Cariocas (residents of Rio) are seen as a load of playboys. Everyone is familiar with the statue of Christ in Rio with its outstretched arms. The Paulistas (residents of Sao Paulo) say that it will clap the day someone in Rio does some work - and I daren't even mention the futebol!

All went well. The Varig chief pilot and myself had a good working relationship by now and he gave me some very useful feedback both on management's thoughts and his own on the aircraft. It was clear that they felt the 146 was a serious competitor, but more studies were needed. VASP were not so easy to convince; they loved their 737-200s and had ordered -300s for their other services. The other two were generally prepared to go along with Varig.

So we went away and did some more sums. We looked again at the interior arrangements, galley, seating, bulkheads etc., and came up with costings. The engineering boys came up with a support package and the pilots with crew training. We took the whole thing back a few weeks later, talked them through it and left them to think about it. About three weeks later we were called back again for further discussions. We were told (very unofficially) that we were the preferred bidder. One of the reasons for this was because they had written a programme of their own and run it through their 737-300 rudimentary simulator and found that under certain weather conditions, ie heavy rain, the 737-300 could not land at SDU. They contacted Boeing, who initially denied their claims, but Varig took their program to Seattle and ran it on Boeing's -300 simulator, and proved their point. Boeing now had a problem. A fix could be done, but it would cost time and money, neither of which Varig had budgeted for. A few more weeks passed and we were called back again. By this time, Boeing had claimed that they would fix the problem, but not immediately and there would be a cost. On this basis, Varig would be paying significantly more per aircraft for the -300 than they would for the 146 and we moved into pole position. A meeting of all the senior beings involved in the Air Bridge took place and it was agreed that the 146 would be the winning bid. However, the information soon reached the ears of Boeing's agent in Brazil and a frantic round of diplomatic activity then began. There was no way that Boeing wanted to lose a deal like this, but they were really up against it with little room for manoeuvre and they knew it. Senior politicians from Washington, accompanied by equally senior beings from Boeing began to arrive and the Brazilian government was put under a lot of pressure, despite the fact that Varig was a private company and received no funds from the government.

Fast forward several weeks, and I was in Paraguay, when I got a message to call in to Rio on the way home. I went to the agent's office and they said that the chief pilot wanted to talk to me, but would not explain why. I called him and we agreed to meet for lunch. I could tell from the moment he walked in that it was not good news, because he wasn't his normal happy self. We sat down at the table and he said “Vamos falar portugues” (let's speak Portuguese), because he knew I could speak it and he said it was easier for him to explain in his own language. He began first to explain his (and the company's) embarrassment and disagreement with the decision, which had gone the way of Boeing. He said that the US government had put a huge amount of pressure on the Brazilian government to buy the Boeings. Basically, this revolved around a recent trade mission from the US, which was about to buy a large amount of Brazilian products; fruit, juices, shoes, steel and other items and that these purchases would be cancelled if the decision went against Boeing. The government, seeing the potential problems of the loss of dollar sales, and dealing with rampant inflation, had to capitulate.

So that was it. A potential 300 million dollar deal and 18 months work had gone down the toilet because of politics and there was nothing anyone could do about it. It was a very sad airliner salesman who checked in for the Varig flight back to London that night. I was upgraded to First Class with no-one sitting next to me – the ultimate upgrade (the remainder of F was full) - and I know who did that, and why. Fortunately, Varig had very good food and especially drinks on their flights and I made good use of both during the 12-hour flight back home. We received a formal letter from Varig about 10 days later. There were times when I hated that job!

Fast forward another two years, and I met their chief pilot again. He told me that the promised mods to allow the 737-300 to land at SDU in bad weather had never materialised, so whenever it rained heavily there, they had to divert to Rio's main international airport. I was not surprised.

Today's GOL 737-800s which operate the route are designated SFPs. A Short Field Performance improvement package was developed in 2005/6 to allow GOL airlines (Varig's successor) to operate their 737-800s into Santos Dumont airport.




Arrival at Santos Dumont and the Defence Attache checks that nothing's fallen off during the flight from Brasilia!



The Varig management team come out for an external inspection of the aircraft.



The 146 taxies onto a remote stand at Congonhas below the room where we entertaining the guests.

There are some interesting photos on the Wiki site for Santos Dumont which show both how short the runways are, and how close it is to the city centre. link . There are also numerous clips on YouTube of landings there.

I hope you found this interesting. If that's the case, I'll do the inside story of the 125-1000 sale to Turkmenistan.

[Samba]

Many thanks for a great story, I was so glad I took the chance to fly on the Electra when I did. As for Santos Dumont and being arrested for taking
Pics from the cafe, well that's another story.

[ian531]

Fascinating report, thanks for posting, can't wait for the next one

Thanks
Ian

[Deleted]

Nov 24, 2014 15:38:38 GMT 1 Samba said:

Many thanks for a great story, I was so glad I took the chance to fly on the Electra when I did. As for Santos Dumont and being arrested for taking
Pics from the cafe, well that's another story.

Strewth samba, that sounds like a whole story in itself! (I noticed last time I was there that they'd put glass on the ledges of the balcony). Yeah, I used to enjoy my frequent trips on the Electra, especially the ones with the lounge at the back.

[Samba]

Even managed to stand behind the Capt for the approach into SDU,,the Capt was German and the uniform was non existent. That was one time my
Airline ID got me access I never dreamed of.

[calflier]

Great story there Garstonboy,very interesting tale,Ive been away for a wek and only just got around to reading,hope you can tell more tales for us,thanks Calflier.