Catania Airport closes after Mount Etna’s eruption, flights diverted and cancelled

An active stratovolcano erupted on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, on July 4, 2024, resulting in diversions and cancellations at a nearby airport. Mount Etna is located in a popular tourist destination, with its eruption causing the Catania Airport to alert passengers. On a social media post, the airport said: “Due to the eruptive activity of Mount Etna and the simultaneous emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere, the [Italian] crisis unit has ordered the closure of airspace sector B2.” Furthermore, it added that flights were capped to five arrivals per hour. Departures would be “handled accordingly”. It later sent out an alert: “The runway is unusable due to a significant fall of volcanic ash on the airfield, and therefore, both arrivals and departures have been suspended. At around 12pm GMT, it said initial work to clear the runway had been completed and were allowed to reopen for departures, while arrivals were limited to per hour. Aviation analytics firm Cirium showed that as of 11:30am BST on July 5, 54 flights had been cancelled departing from Catania Airport. This equates to around 43% of all scheduled departures. It added that 30 arrivals were also cancelled, around 24% of all scheduled arrivals (not including diversions). Ryanair has seen the highest number of cancellations to/from the Italian airport, followed by easyJet and ITA.