Ash from Mount Etna kept Sicily's Catania airport closed into the weekend, with flights suspended "until at least 2pm local time (12:00 GMT) on Saturday," Al Jazeera reported [1]. The outlet described it as "the greatest disruption the airport has seen in more than two decades" [1].
The scale is clearest in the airport's own week. Al Jazeera reported that more than a third of "the 1,974 flights between Thursday of last week and Wednesday" were cancelled, and that 600 were diverted over the same period [1]. Catania typically processes at least 40,000 passengers a day, and about 300 passengers were still awaiting transfer to alternate airports on Thursday evening, according to the report [1].
Euronews, reporting on August 12 in what it called the eruption's "sixth consecutive day," gave narrower daily figures from earlier in the week: "around 55 outbound flights have been cancelled" on Wednesday alone, with "roughly 388 departures scrapped between the start of the eruption and the previous day" [2]. The two outlets count different windows, so the figures sit side by side rather than reconciling into one total: Al Jazeera's 1,974-flight, one-third-cancelled tally spans Thursday to Wednesday, while Euronews reports the running count through August 12 [1][2].
The disruption reached well beyond the runway. Euronews reported the "volcanic ash cloud continues to drift south and southwest," with "the highest concentration of ash remains over Sicily, while lower levels have been reported between eastern Malta and as far as northern Libya" [2]. On Wednesday, Euronews said, Catania-Fontanarossa was "forced to suspend all arrivals and departures until 6 pm," while nearby Comiso airport halted operations until 10am [2].
Catania sits 30 kilometers south of Mount Etna, Al Jazeera noted, close enough that a drifting ash plume translates directly into grounded aircraft [1]. For travelers, the practical effect was days of rolling cancellations. One passenger told Al Jazeera: "We were due to leave on Wednesday, but our flight was cancelled; then they rescheduled it for Friday. Now that one's been cancelled too" [1].
