(Updates delays, cancellations, adds Gol statement)

By Todd Benson

SAO PAULO, July 24 (Reuters) - More than half of all flights in Brazil were delayed or canceled on Tuesday for the third straight day as the country's air crisis deepened following a deadly crash last week and a major radar outage.

Brazil's airports authority, Infraero, said 590 flights were delayed nationwide and 298 more were canceled by the evening, further angering travelers who have already been subjected to repeated disruptions in the past 10 months.

"I've been trying to get home for a week," Graca Ribeiro, an engineer from the Amazon city of Belem, shouted as she waited at Rio de Janeiro's international airport. "I haven't been able to go to work and have had to pay for a hotel out of my own pocket."

The chaos raised tension at airports around the country. In Rio, passengers protested the delays by donning red clown noses. In the northeastern city of Fortaleza, a group of irate travelers stormed the tarmac and occupied a plane until being removed by police, local radio reported.

Gol Linhas Aereas <GOLL4.SA><GOL.N>, the country's No. 2 airline, responded to the turmoil on Tuesday by urging passengers to postpone travel plans until next Monday, when it will unveil a revamped route network.

Most of the delays and cancellations happened in the business capital Sao Paulo, where heavy rains on Monday and thick fog on Tuesday forced authorities to close Congonhas airport for hours at a time, setting off a ripple-effect of disruptions at other airports.

The aviation authority ANAC prohibited the sale of tickets for flights leaving from Congonhas, the country's busiest airport, until traffic normalized. It also limited long-distance flights out of Congonhas.

TAM Linhas Aereas <TAMM4.SA><TAM.N>, the No.1 airline, suspended ticket sales until Thursday for flights to and from Congonhas and Sao Paulo's international airport Guarulhos.

The downpours caused a small mudslide on the edge of the airfield at Congonhas that spilled over onto a highway that provides access to the terminal.

The mudslide took place at the same airport where an Airbus A320 <EAD.PA> flown by TAM skidded off a rain-slicked runway last Tuesday and crashed into a nearby cargo building and gas station, bursting into flames.

All 187 people on the flight and at least 12 more on the ground were killed in the accident, the deadliest in Brazil's history. Firefighters are still searching for bodies at the site, which the city plans to turn into a memorial.

The TAM accident was the second major air disaster in Brazil since last September, when a Boeing 737 <BA.N> operated by Gol clipped wings with a private jet and crashed in the Amazon jungle. All 154 people on board were killed.

The Gol accident exposed serious flaws in Brazil's aviation system, touching off months of delays and cancellations that the government has struggled to remedy.

Air traffic controllers, fearing they were being blamed for the country's aviation woes, have staged periodic work slowdowns for months to protest outdated radar and radio equipment and poor salaries.

The crisis worsened over the weekend when a radar glitch in the Amazon forced more than a dozen international flights to change course, causing delays at several airports in Brazil and the United States. (Additional reporting by Rodrigo Gaier in Rio de Janeiro)

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