Passengers at Catania Airport faced a second day of chaos on Monday as volcanic ash from Mount Etna climbed a mile above the crater, forcing the suspension of all incoming flights for a second day. The airport, which serves hundreds of thousands of British holidaymakers each year, shut on Sunday after the volcano began spewing ash from a vent on the upper eastern flank of the Voragine summit crater at around 7.45am local time. Activity intensified through the morning, with Strombolian eruptions – huge bursts of lava and hot rock – blasting from the vent, and by evening glowing fragments of lava were lighting up the sky.
Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology raised the aviation alert level to red after detecting the intense activity. The national carrier ITA Airways confirmed that all departing and arriving flights at Catania Airport would be cancelled or rescheduled. Flight monitoring service Flight Radar 24 showed all arriving flights as cancelled. The red alert, issued when an ash cloud presents a potential hazard to aircraft, came as the ash spread across Sicily, with 23 flights diverted to Palermo Airport.
“Mount Etna's eruption forces Catania Airport to cancel all flights for a second day, stranding thousands of passengers.”
One stranded passenger described the situation as “total chaos”. Writing on Facebook after his flight was diverted to Palermo, he said: “Departure with over an hour delay, flight diverted to Palermo and, once landed, another hour waiting in the plane without any information. At the airport, total chaos: no order in flight management, no indication of buses to reach Catania, no assistance and not even a bottle of water after hours of waiting. We’ve been standing for about four hours waiting for buses that never came. In the end we were forced to pay for …” He later added that he had paid €600 for a taxi.
Mount Etna, one of Europe’s highest and most active stratovolcanoes, is in an almost perpetual state of activity. Its most recent eruption before this event was documented on 1 January. In recent weeks, local reports observed a gradual lava flow from a fissure that formed around 3,000 metres at the base of the Northeast Crater. The INGV confirmed it detected activity in the upper Valle del Leone on 26 June. The airport remained closed until 2pm local time on Monday, with authorities monitoring the volcano through visual and thermal cameras. With ash emissions continuing, the disruption shows no immediate sign of easing.