Located in the easternmost part of the Italian island of Sicily, Catania–Fontanarossa Airport (CTA) is a risky one to book flights out of because of the periodic volcanic activity that comes from the nearby Mount Etna.
Europe’s most active volcano has erupted in 2006, 2007, 2012, 2018, 2021, 2023 and, now, 2024. As recently as July 2024, concurrent explosions of Etna and the nearby Stromboli volcanoes caused the closure of the airport due to volcanic ash and smoke causing poor visibility for pilots.
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But the summer did not end without another explosion and, on Aug. 14, Etna erupted yet again (while many picture an eruption as an apocalyptic event, this particular volcano is prone to smaller eruptions that do not cause deaths but affect the air quality of the nearby area for days).
This is where Sicily’s busiest airport is at now
Catania-Fontanarossa Airport shut down to all incoming and departing flights on Aug. 14 and started slowly resuming flights the following morning. Airways such as British Airways, EasyJet (EJTTF) and Ryanair (RYAOF) are the main ones serving the airport.
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While some were able to resume flights by Friday evening, others were being diverted to other Sicilian cities such as Palermo and Trapani.
"Operations will resume once the ash fallout phenomenon has been concluded and its removal from the flight infrastructures,” the airport management company running Catania-Fontanarossa wrote in an internal note reported by local outlets.
The airport itself also sent out a social media post telling travelers to “not go to the airport without checking the status of your flight.”
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This happens relatively often (here is why)
Along with being Europe’s largest active volcano, Etna is particularly prone to erupting. It is in a constant state of low-level activity that, because of its frequency, is significantly less intense than the predicted eruption of Mount Vesuvius — the volcano in Naples has not gone off since 1944 and, most seismologists agree, could be particularly disastrous when it does erupt.
Another European country that has seen significant volcanic activity in the last year, Iceland had its Sundhnúkur crater row erupt five times over the months between the end of 2023 and the summer of 2024.
“The Icelandic Meteorological Office has announced that the most recent volcanic activity near Grindavík in Southwest Iceland has stopped,” the country’s flagship carrier Icelandair writes on its website. “The activity began on May 29, 2024. It lasted 24 days and and was the fifth eruption since December 2023 occurring in the Sundhnúksgígar crater row area, and the eighth eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula since March 2021. The activity did not disrupt air travel to and from Iceland.”
One of history’s most disruptive, at least when it comes to air travel, volcanic explosions occurred in 2011 when Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland broke through a glacier. Over 95,000 flights were canceled between April 1 and 25 of that year while a prolonged ash cloud continued to affect travel throughout the spring.
As the ash cloud then proceeded to move toward Greenland, flights between North America and Europe saw the most disruption even when the immediate danger from the volcano had passed.
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