SAO PAULO, Brazil — Critics condemned the government for failing to invest in safety measures adopted by other urban airports, as officials confirmed that a plane crash killed all 186 people onboard, the nation's second major air disaster in less than a year.

Firefighters on Wednesday pulled at least 171 charred bodies from the site where the Airbus-320 crashed Tuesday, igniting a 1,830-degree fireball.

The plane slammed into a gas station and a TAM Airlines building after narrowly clearing the airport's perimeter fence and rush-hour traffic on a surrounding highway. Three people on the ground also died and another 11 were hospitalized.

Armando Schneider Filho, director of engineering for the nation's airport authority Infraero, said the runway would remain closed for 20 days.

For months, air safety concerns have been aired in congressional hearings, and pilots and traffic controllers have worried for years about the short, slippery runways at Brazil's busiest airport.

Landing on the 6,362-foot-long runway at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport is so challenging that pilots liken it to an aircraft carrier — if they don't touch down precisely within the tarmac's first 1,000 feet, they're warned to pull up and circle around again. The ungrooved runway becomes even more treacherous in the rain when it turns into a slick landing surface.

The runway appears to have been a key factor in Tuesday's crash.

President Luis Inacio da Silva has been unable to wrest control of the civil aviation system from the military, which oversees Brazil's air traffic controllers and has filled top positions at the national aviation agency with political appointees with little or no experience.

Only the day before, two other planes skidded off the runway's end.