Airline Azul Tumbles Into Bankruptcy After Vowing to Avoid It

Even as the Brazilian airline Azul SA struggled with exchange rate pressures and the lingering effects of the pandemic, top executives insisted they would do whatever they could to avoid filing for bankruptcy.

“The ones who benefit from a Chapter 11 process are not the partners — it’s the lawyers, the advisers,” the company’s chief executive officer, John Peter Rodgerson, told a local publication in August.

Last week, though, after multiple debt reworks and several cash injections, the company acknowledged the extent of its problems and took the step that it tried so hard to resist, filing for bankruptcy ...