(Rome) Catania airport in Sicily announced its closure on Friday due to an eruption of Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, whose ash is being released into the airspace.
“The runway is unusable due to significant volcanic ash fallout. Consequently, arrivals and departures are suspended,” the airport management company announced in a statement.
Flights are expected to resume at 3 p.m. local time (9 a.m. Eastern time), she said.
At 3,324 metres (11,000 feet), Etna has erupted frequently over the past 500,000 years. In recent days, its central crater has been spewing lava flows and ash clouds that have affected Catania airport below.
The ash plumes reached a height of 4.5 kilometers, the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV) reported on Thursday on X.
Images posted on social media on Friday showed streets in central Catania covered in thick layers of black ash, causing traffic jams.
Italian authorities have also issued a red alert for another volcano, Stromboli, which dominates the eponymous island of the Aeolian archipelago (north of Sicily), whose eruption has caused significant clouds of ash.
This volcano, whose summit is 920 metres high and whose base is 2,000 metres below sea level, is one of the few in the world to exhibit almost continuous activity, according to the INGV.
Millions of passengers pass through Catania International Airport every year, serving the eastern part of Sicily, one of Italy’s most popular tourist destinations.