THE night before Marcos Boyington, his sister Isamira and a friend were scheduled to fly to Brazil for a family visit, "everything went crazy," he said.
They learned that Brazil's Varig airline had canceled its nonstop LAX-Sao Paulo flight, along with scores of other departures, after it defaulted on leases and creditors seized its planes.
"We all started freaking out," said Boyington, a software engineer who lives in Culver City.
The three finally made it to Sao Paulo, thanks to Air Canada, which honored their tickets. But on his trip to Brazil and back, Boyington endured several days of delays, missed connections and a harrowing Varig flight on which, he said, the cockpit window blew out. (A Varig spokesman disputed the last incident.)
Boyington's June 23-to-July 13 journey shows the havoc that a troubled foreign carrier can wreak when it cancels flights or stops flying entirely. (Varig is now being reorganized under new investors.)
When you're holding a ticket on such a carrier, as opposed to a U.S. airline, you may have surprisingly few legal rights. But you can avoid or ease the pain by researching the foreign carrier before you book it, paying with a credit card and being proactive about pursuing alternatives.
Here's more about your options.
* Know your legal rights: "There's a very tangled web out there," said Anthony Concil, spokesman for the International Air Transport Assn., a Geneva-based trade association of major airlines. "I wish there was a simple answer."
In the U.S., a law commonly known as Section 145 requires that other carriers, if they have space, honor tickets of passengers bumped by an insolvent U.S. carrier. But the law doesn't apply to foreign airlines, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. (California's Seller of Travel Act, which compensates consumers when certain tour or travel agents default, doesn't cover airlines.)
The European Union lacks a law similar to Section 145, although it is studying the issue. But the EU, unlike the U.S., does require airlines to compensate customers for delays and cancellations in many situations, so it may be of help. For details, visit ec.europa.eu/transport/air/rules/rights/info_en.htm.
Like the U.S., individual nations in Europe and elsewhere may offer some legal protection to customers of insolvent airlines, but international aviation organizations could not provide a list. Britain's Civil Aviation Authority, for instance, provides limited rights; for details, visit www.caa.co.uk, and click on "Consumer Protection."
