The TAM 3054 accident occured because the pilots were stressed by the fact they needed to land on a not-so-long runway where an incident occured a day before. This stress has lead the pilots to forget about setting the thrust levers to idle. The link writes that after the accident the airport used an alternative runway for some time, but what happened to the infamous one? Has the runway been either prolonged (that's probably hard because there are roads in the vicinity) or closed permanently in the meantime or do pilots still have to land on it?
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$\begingroup$ @mins Because of when it's raining, there had been an incident the day before. But this has been dealt with as evident from Bianfable's answer. $\endgroup$– GiovanniNov 3, 2021 at 11:58
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The runway has not been extended. The final accident report lists the runway length for 17R/35L (the accident runway) as 1945 m:
It has two asphalt landing-and-takeoff runways: the main runway (17R/35L), measures 1945 x 45 meters; and the auxiliary runway (17L/35R), measures 1435 x 45 meters.
My current Jeppesen chart for SBSP lists runway 17R/35L at a length of 6365' (1940 m), so basically the same. The other runway (17L/35R) is listed at 4905' (1495 m), so slightly longer.
The runway has however been equipped with rainwater drainage grooves after the accident:
The airport has been troubled by slippery runways and has had several accidents where water accumulation has been a significant factor (most notably, the one involving TAM Brazilian Airlines Flight 3054 in July 2007). Although the main runway was repaved in June 2007, its new rainwater drainage grooves were only finished in September 2007.
Since 17R/35L is still the longer runway, it is obviously still in use today. It has ILS and RNP approaches on both ends, where the shorter runway only offers RNP.
answered Nov 2, 2021 at 16:23