Still, many Mexicans who had tickets for flights on the airline, Mexicana, said they feared they would not get promised refunds for tickets for future flights, and complained of having to buy full-price tickets to replace worthless Mexicana tickets.

Tour operators said that while the news on Friday of the suspension of all flights by Mexicana was abrupt, it did not come as a total surprise. The company was saddled by debt and unable to renegotiate labor contracts with its unions. It had already signaled to travel operators that its continued operation was precarious.

“They stopped selling tickets for about a week, so that’s not a good sign,” said Mark Noennig, the vice president and general manager of Apple Vacations, a large operator that sells tours to Mexico.

In fact, tour operators said they began preparing a month ago, when Mexicana filed for bankruptcy protection. “We were very proactive once they filed for Chapter 11,” said Greg Bernd, a president of Classic Vacations, a tour operator in California. “We started contacting people and encouraging them to rebook.”

Mexicana served more than a dozen routes to the United States and about a dozen routes inside Mexico, as well as flights to Latin America and Europe. Over the last couple of years, it has lost market share to low-cost airlines, and the whole industry suffered when tourism dropped last year in the wake of the swine flu outbreak and the economic crisis. Reports about violence in the country have also continued to discourage travel.

“Mexico is a tough sell because of the bad publicity,” said Bob McMillen, the chief executive of TravelWizard.com, a travel agency. “This is not going to help. It’s a shame that this has happened.”

Jim Osborne, a vice president at Virtuoso, in Fort Worth, a network of travel agencies, said the shutdown came during a slow season for travel to Mexico. “If it had to be, it’s the right time,” he said. “If it had happened in winter, it would have had a much bigger impact.”

Because Mexico’s resort destinations are served by several airlines, rescheduling flights is relatively easy, tour operators said.

Mexican officials played down the effect on passengers at a news conference on Monday. Gloria Guevara, the tourism secretary, said that she did not expect the Mexicana shutdown to reduce the ministry’s forecast for the number of tourists visiting Mexico this year. Several foreign airlines were already planning new routes to Mexico, she said.

But for many Mexicans who had bought Mexicana tickets for their vacations, the outlook is not as clear. More than 4,000 people wrote to a forum set up by El Universal, a Mexico City daily, to complain, many of them offering tales of ruined vacations and unanswered telephone calls.

One, Paola Páez Rosas, wrote that she had bought six tickets to Cancún for a family vacation in September. Now she will need to buy new tickets, and she said she doubted she would ever get her money back from Mexicana.

“I ask that they give a viable solution to every single one of the customers and they tell us the truth, because it’s not fair that we’re the ones who are affected because of bad management,” she wrote.