Rome, Aug 16. (dpa/GNA) – Flight operations at Sicily’s Catania Airport, have largely returned to normal, following significant disruption caused by the eruption of Mount Etna, with only a handful of cancellations listed on the airport’s website on Sunday morning.
Most arrivals and departures were running as scheduled, while flight tracking service Flightradar24, also showed flights resuming at the airport.
Airport operator SAC, resumed operations on Saturday afternoon, after the volcanic activity alert level was lowered from red to orange. Operations were initially slow to restart.
Since the eruption began more than a week ago, hundreds of flights have been cancelled, delayed or diverted. SAC said around 36% of flights scheduled for Catania between August 6 and August 12 were cancelled, describing the impact on airport infrastructure as the worst in 20 years.
Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, erupts regularly, but prolonged ash emissions combined with persistent southerly winds that pushed ash directly over the airport made this episode particularly disruptive to air traffic, said Mario Mattia of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
GNA