Nach Ätna-Ausbruch: Flugbetrieb auf Sizilien wieder weitgehend normal

Catania. Following the significant restrictions due to the eruption of Mount Etna, flight operations at Catania Airport have resumed largely normally. On the island's Mediterranean island's airport website, only a few flights are displayed as cancelled. Most arrivals and departures are now proceeding as planned. Even flight tracking service Flightradar24 shows arrivals and departures.

However, some flights to Germany, such as those to Frankfurt or Munich, are among the cancelled flights on Sunday. The airport operator SAC had resumed operations on Saturday afternoon after lowering the volcanic activity alert level from red to orange. Initially, the operation moved slowly. Since the eruption began over a week ago, hundreds of flights were cancelled, delayed, or rerouted.

According to the operator, between August 6 and 12, about 36 percent of flights scheduled for Catania were cancelled. The operator described the impact on the airport infrastructure as the worst in the past 20 years. The volcano is Europe's most active, with regular eruptions. What made this eruption so cunning for air travel was the persistent, lengthy ash emissions, according to Mario Mattia of the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). Helpful were constant south winds that directly carried the ash over the airport.