(Wellington) A volcanic eruption forced the cancellation of several flights in New Zealand on Thursday due to the release of an ash plume, local airline Air New Zealand said.
The volcano, White Island, is located about 50 kilometres off the coast of the North Island and 200 kilometres from Auckland, the country’s most populous city. In 2019, its eruption killed 22 people.
Volcanic ash on flight paths forced Air New Zealand to cancel 10 flights on Thursday morning, it said.
A company spokesman later told AFP that flights had resumed after the ash cleared from the airspace.
According to satellite images, “minor eruptive activity” began earlier in August, research institute GNS Science reported in an update.
The event is part of the “typical eruptive cycles” known from White Island, also called Whakaari in Maori, and “this activity could continue for some time, weeks or even months,” the institute warned.
Experts said residents of the country’s main islands could be exposed to volcanic gases and suffer mild eye and throat irritation.
New Zealand raised its volcanic alert level earlier in August to three on a scale of five.
Access to White Island has been closed since the deadly eruption in 2019, a measure that also puts a strain on the work of specialists, preventing them from repairing monitoring systems, and making it “difficult to place the current activity in the context of past eruptive episodes”, according to volcanologist Simon Barker of Victoria University of Wellington.
Volcanic ash wreaks havoc on aircraft engines, expert says. “Ash in volcanic plumes is considered a hazard to aircraft because it gets sucked into their engines, can clog fuel lines, stick to engine surfaces and erode parts” of the aircraft, says volcanologist Adrian Pittari of the University of Waikato.
“It can also penetrate electrical and computer systems, infiltrate the cabin and reduce visibility,” he adds.