|
The situation at Varig Brazilian Airlines has deteriorated substantially, today, June 21. For lack of payment the company has been expelled from IATA and without enough planes, it has cancelled flights indefinitely to 11 international destinations including New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Paris and Munich.
The expulsion from IATA (International Air Transport Association) the international governing body that regulates air transport means that people holding a Varig ticket will not be able to simply use another company to fly. IATA acts as a clearing house guaranteeing that the airline that transports the passenger gets the money for it. Domestically Varig is also suspending most of its flights. 73.7% of all flights leaving from São Paulo and Rio's four mains airports have been cancelled today. 28 of the 38 flights scheduled to leave this morning from Santos Dumont and Galeão (Rio) and Congonhas and Cumbica (São Paulo) were cancelled, according to Infraero, the company the manages Brazilian airports. Varig does not comment on these numbers. According to Varig itself, the only international flights maintained are those where there is more demand and they can make more money. They are for Caracas (daily), Buenos Aires (four daily flights), Santiago del Chile (daily), Lima (one), Santa Cruz de la Sierra (one), London (one), Miami (one), Munich (two daily flights). The international flights suspended are for Assunción, Bogota, Montevideo. Mexico City, Madrid, Munich, Milan, Paris, Los Angeles, Miami and New York. The ANAC (National Agency of Civilian Aviation) has prepared a contingency plan by which other airlines are supposed to carry those Varig passengers whose flights are cancelled. TAM and Gol are already taking in all the domestic passengers. But it is still not defined how they will be reimbursed for this service. As for the international flights the ANAC hopes foreign airlines will honor the code-sharing agreements to transport stranded passengers. With 5,000 Brazilians is Germany for the World Cup they are the main concern of the agency. It's estimated that close to half of them hold a Varig ticket. Brazil expects that Lufthansa will bring Brazilians back home when Varig goes belly up.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.