Brazilian airline Varig suspended 27 flights on Friday, the country's airport management company Infraero said.

Varig, which is on the edge of bankruptcy, suspended 27 flights, 13 of them from Rio de Janeiro.

As well as that, Brasilia airport sealed one of its runways for 90 minutes after a Varig aircraft lost a part of its landing gear, after the plane had already landed safely.

The airline has cancelled around 100 flights since last Thursday, after an unsuccessful auction for the airline resulted in a solid bid worth less than US$450 million. The bid was well below the minimum set at US$860 million by the bankruptcy court judge Luiz Roberto Ayoub.

The top bid, about US$449 million offered by a group of Varig workers, is under consideration by Ayoub, who said he was unlikely to approve it unless he could understand how the workers could pay so much.

Varig, a member of Star Alliance along with Lufthansa, United Airlines and Mexicana, is saddled with more than US$3 billion in debt. It sought bankruptcy protection in June 2005.

Most of that debt is owed to public services such as airport authorities, Infraero, and its fuel distributors. The company also owes more than US$1 billion in unpaid taxes.

Founded in 1927, Varig, or Viacao Aerea Rio-Granadense, became the face of Brazil in the skies in the 1970s when it won a monopoly on international flights.

(Xinhua News Agency June 19, 2006)