In the Brazilian case, air transport plays a fundamental role given the great distances of the

territory, which are now transposed by the diffusion of aviation. Passengers are displaced faster,
and goods are transported more, due to the capacity utilization of the equipment.

The growth of the sector is also within major changes over the last three decades. We can
highlight two important points that show this. One is the increase in speed. Accelerating the
movement of goods and the movement of passengers from one point to another uses the
development of air transport equipment and new materials, as well as the possibilities of various
telecommunications and information systems. The biggest boost was with the development and
diffusion of the jets in the 70s. In Brazil, it can be seen that improvements in equipment also
allowed a 30% increase in the average speed of equipment in the nineties. The Brazilian civil
aviation fleet, for example, has changed in less than twenty years. If at the beginning of the
eighties, the fleet was turboprop, in 1986 it still had 10% of it, and in the nineties it is all
composed of jets, according to data from the DAC Statistical Yearbook. The medium jet is
widespread in regional traffic and the air taxi is dominated by so-called jets. The average speed
of the equipment increased from 680 to 723 km per hour in national traffic and from 320 to 405
in regional traffic, according to data from the DAC Statistical Yearbook. Flights also have
autonomy of 12 to 15 hours.

A second point is the widespread use of the airplane as a means of travel, especially for long
distances. This can be verified by both the increase of passengers and the diffusion of larger
capacity equipment. In the early nineties, the number of passengers doubled in less than four
years. New models of larger capacity aircraft offering more seats on each flight are used. This
also makes it possible to reduce the cost of travel per passenger on both domestic and
international routes. Mcdougall model MD-11s carried up to 300 passengers and 400 passengers
on average with Boeing's model B 747-400. In regional transport, medium-sized equipment was
disseminated using both Boeing model B 737 equipment and Fokker equipment, the Fokker 100,
which carries 100 passengers on average.

The increased speed and capacity of air transport equipment and diffusion has enabled the
growth of civil aviation that can be verified by the increase in air traffic. If we take the regional
case of São Paulo, traffic doubled in six years between 1992 and 1998. The three airports within
the city of São Paulo showed the highest growth. Guarulhos International Airport increased by
160%, Congonhas International Airport increased by 236% and Campo de Mars Airport had the
highest growth: 286%, according to data from the Regional Flight Protection Service
(SRPV). This São Paulo Regional Service accounted for more than 1,800 flights per day at the
beginning of the year 2000. In the late nineties of the twentieth century, the air transport industry
moved more than 50 million passengers per year in Brazilian airspace. Only the three air ports of
São Paulo accounted for 25 million passengers at the beginning of 2000, according to data from
the Civil Aviation Department - DAC. The three major national air carriers were responsible for
the transport of more than four billion tons of freight / km / year and more than 26 million
passengers shipped in 1998. The increase was most marked between regional lines and taxis.
. The airline industry as a whole grew by 600%, from one and a half million passengers at the
beginning of the decade to nine million seven years later, and of these two million on the Rio-
São Paulo line alone.

This growth develops within a process of deregulation of air transport, which began in the late
1970s, breaking with the monopoly of territorial spaces by national companies (Dempsey,
1993). But these changes are also developing in the organization and management of air
transport worldwide, and in the context of these changes, aviation workers face multiple
challenges. First, adapting to different speed levels. The increased speed of aircraft and, above
all, of systems, meant a change in the pace of activity. The acceleration of systems and
equipment requires rapid actions and operations, affecting decision-making processes and being
an intrinsic part of the work process. For traffic control, new information systems are also
implemented in the seventies of the twentieth century.

Aviation technologies included changes to aircraft systems, airworthiness systems as well as

reservation management systems and air circulation management systems. The pace of speed
becomes part of air transport management, as well as associating longer aircraft use practices and
reducing maintenance time. This increasingly intense use of equipment, with the reduction in
ground downtime and the maintenance time of systems and equipment, also meant more working
time for a set of workers involved.

In the Brazilian case, these technological changes could also be noticed in the air traffic
management, especially in the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century. Controllers control
the traffic of all flights in airspace, notably in large centers, supported by information from a
system called Sisdacta, Integrated Air Defense System and Air Traffic Control, with radar
detection and data capture capability. , processing and data transmission supported by a display
support system associated with the flight schedule.

However, these changes were not accompanied by a process of transport maintenance and
organization as well as air traffic management systems. The air transport management process
develops at a different pace from systems and equipment. Even as the industry grew, investments
were restricted. Many of the equipment had malfunctions in the nineties of the twentieth century
as well as lack of staff and training, especially in air traffic.

Another challenge faced was the different changes with aviation deregulation. Within this
process imposed by international companies management practices are also changed. New
policies are imposed within a process of flexibility as synonymous with speed and
modernity. The possibilities of information circulation and speed take over the productive
processes driven by new standards of flexibility, either in production or in labor relations.