For the second time in four days, Sicily’s busiest airport has been forced to ground every arrival and departure after Mount Etna’s North-East crater spewed a fresh column of volcanic ash 4 kilometres into the sky. At 09:31 on 29 September, Catania Airport Authority announced the immediate suspension of operations until at least 15:00 local time, citing an updated red-level aviation warning issued by Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). The decision reverses a short-lived reopening just hours earlier, when ash levels had briefly subsided and the alert was downgraded to orange. Business travellers and tour operators awoke to a completely different scenario: incoming flights were diverted to Palermo, Comiso and Reggio Calabria, while outbound passengers were advised not to proceed to the airport without airline confirmation. Etna’s eruptions regularly disrupt Sicilian airspace, but September’s sequence has been unusually intense, coming at the tail-end of the island’s conference and cruise season when hotel occupancies — and corporate travel — remain high. Airlines face extra fuel and crew-rostering costs when rerouting jets around the volcanic plume; companies with time-sensitive cargo have already shifted shipments onto ferries and road freight via Messina. Travel-management firms are urging clients to build at least 24 hours of buffer time into itineraries involving Catania for the rest of the week. Insurers reminded policy-holders that EU261 compensation does not apply to ‘extraordinary circumstances’ such as volcanic activity, although meals, accommodation and re-routing must still be provided. If the ash fallout persists, contingency plans could include moving charter operations to Sigonella military base, an arrangement last activated during the major 2021 eruption. For globally mobile employees, the episode underscores the vulnerability of single-runway regional hubs to natural-hazard disruption — a factor increasingly baked into corporate risk assessments for assignment and project work in Southern Europe.
Source: ANSA.it
