Mount Etna eruption and volcanic ash shut Sicily’s busiest airport

Continuing volcanic activity from Mount Etna has forced the closure of Sicily’s busiest airport.

Authorities at Vincenzo Bellini Airport said on Friday that flights will remain suspended until at least 2pm local time (12:00 GMT) on Saturday, with ash from the volcano causing the greatest disruption the airport has seen in more than two decades.

Mount Etna’s eruption led to the cancellation of more than a third of the 1,974 flights between Thursday of last week and Wednesday of this week. Another 600 flights were diverted during the same period.

The volcano is Europe’s tallest and most active and has renewed questions about whether having a key airport nearby makes sense. Catania is located 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of the volcano.

Hundreds of passengers are waiting for flights that have been cancelled or delayed during the busiest travel week of the year. People planning to travel through Catania on Saturday have been contacting airlines to see whether their flights will still be running.

“We were due to leave on Wednesday, but our flight was cancelled; then they rescheduled it for Friday. Now that one’s been cancelled too,” Antonella Thirande Warnakulasuriya Costa, who is travelling to Sri Lanka via Dubai, told Reuters.

Catania airport usually handles at least 40,000 passengers a day. According to local media, about 300 passengers were waiting on Thursday evening to be transferred to another airport.

The ash from Mount Etna has not only affected Europeans; it has reached as far as North Africa.

The pause in flights has led the Italian train company Trenitalia to add six additional trains to the Palermo-Messina-Catania route.

Passengers can usually claim compensation if their travel plans are severely disrupted, but volcanic eruptions tend to come under what is known as extraordinary circumstances, meaning airlines are not legally obliged to compensate.