All flights taking off from and landing at Catania’s Sicilian airport were suspended until at least 8 p.m. local time on Monday due to an eruption from Mount Etna, whose ash blankets the area’s airspace, the government announced.

“Due to an eruption of Mount Etna (…) and the fall of volcanic ash, flight operations are suspended until 8 p.m.” (6 p.m. GMT), the airport reports on the X network, formerly Twitter.

For example, the period of suspension of activity was extended after it was announced hours in advance that flights would be suspended until 11:00 GMT.

Similarly, a decree issued by the mayor of Catania, Enrico Trantino, “prohibits the circulation of two-wheeled vehicles, bicycles and motorcycles during the next 48 hours, due to the fact that several parts of the city are covered with a layer of volcanic ash”, according to the municipality on its website.

In 2022, about 10 million passengers traveled through Catania International Airport, which covers the eastern part of Sicily, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Italy.

Mount Etna, which tops out at 3,324 meters, is the highest active volcano in Europe.

new submarine volcanoes

Just a week ago it was announced that three submarine volcanoes had been discovered off the Sicilian coast, bringing the number of volcanoes in the Sicilian Channel, the estuary that separates the Italian island from North Africa, to 15.

“We discovered six volcanoes in 2019, plus the three we just discovered, but five or six were already classified, that is, about fifteen submarine volcanoes,” explained Emanuele Lodolo, a geophysics expert at the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental. Geophysics (OGS) from Italy.

The latter three “are found at variable depths between 100 and 400 meters, and the nearest, about 7 km from the coast,” southwest of Sicily, Lodolo said.

At the moment, the experts do not know whether these volcanoes pose a danger to the population: “It is like earthquakes, we do not have the capacity to make predictions, we cannot confirm that there will not be an eruption. The most important thing is to monitor them constantly.”