In a Limbo

I was extremely distraught when my flight date was changed without my concession, but things have just gone from bad to worst; since the last few days of march the LAB flights to Madrid have been canceled, followed by the rest of LAB flights; LAB offices are shut down now and company is on the brink of bankruptcy. I have resigned to loosing my ticket to Madrid, and now I am looking for other options, which will cost me at least 1200$, probably more. Things got even worst my travel agency in Israel (Issta good bless them), told me that El-Al will not respect my flight from Madrid to Tel-Aviv, unless I have some sticker from LAB confirming my flight. I have no such sticker, and no possibility for getting one since LAB is dead, gone, does not exist anymore. This is just absolutely ridiculous, their using the bankruptcy of another company to declare their part of the ticket void, even though they got there money 6 month ago. My brother will go to tomorrow to the agency to try to resolve this, but if they will not respect, then I have not other option but to buy a complete new ticket from Bolivia to Israel, which will probably cost me more than my original return ticket. Of course once I get to Israel I will have my lawyer sue the El-Al and the agency; what there doing is absurd, I paid for my ticket and I called to make a reservation for the 15 of April, what can a person do more to get his ticket respected by an airline?

But leaving the cocoon of my plight for a moment, this is a tragedy at a larger scale; there are many passengers stranded in the airport, some going on a hunger strike, mostly people from abroad who have no means of going back home now, others are Bolivian who had vacation packages to Madrid, vacations that now turned into nightmares. The worst part though is that 1200 employees of LAB will be jobless soon, not that it is a sudden shock for them; many of them have not been receiving their salaries for 11 month now, they still hanged on though((good employment is scarce in Bolivia,), they did it in hope that the company will turn things around, the company did not.