Etna Ash Shuts Catania, and Palermo Takes the Flights

Catania airport suspended all flights from 9:30 a.m. on 14 September after Mount Etna ash closed airspace sectors C1 and B3. SAC, the company that runs the Sicilian hub, restored arrivals and departures at 7 p.m. on 15 September, once Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology cut the aviation alert from red to orange.

The passengers did not disappear. By 1 p.m. on the second day, 44 flights had been reworked through Palermo, Comiso, Trapani and Rome Fiumicino, repeating the summer pattern that already sent more than 600 Catania arrivals to other runways in August.

Monday’s Stoppage, Hour by Hour

INGV’s Etna Observatory issued a red Volcano Observatory Notice for Aviation at 4:43 UTC on 14 September, the highest of four colour codes, after a fresh ash cloud rose from the summit and drifted south. SAC first stopped arrivals until 4 p.m. local time. By 1:15 p.m. sector B3 had closed as well, and the halt covered departures through 10 p.m.

THE FONTANAROSSA CLOCK

1. 14 September, 4:43 UTC: INGV raises the aviation colour code to red as ash leaves the summit toward the south.
2. 14 September, 9:30 a.m.: SAC suspends arrivals until 4 p.m. after sector C1 closes.
3. 14 September, 1:15 p.m.: Sectors C1 and B3 are both shut, and all flights stop until 10 p.m.
4. 14 September, evening: The stop runs on to 10 a.m. on 15 September. Only 16 flights operate without limits, and more than 150 are cancelled or moved.
5. 15 September, daytime: The halt is pushed again, first into the afternoon and then to 10 p.m.
6. 15 September, 7 p.m.: After INGV steps the alert down to orange, SAC reopens C1 and B3.

In its 7 p.m. notice, SAC said flight operations resumed with immediate effect and asked travellers to check with their airline before setting out for Fontanarossa. A red notice went out again on 16 September. Local operational updates on 17 September still described the airport as open, a reminder that a red code describes the volcano, not an automatic runway shutdown.

Palermo Took 26 of the Moved Flights

Airport-board updates at 1 p.m. on 15 September, while the field was still closed, showed 80 cancellations, 25 of them arrivals and 55 departures, plus 44 flights sent to other airports. Palermo absorbed the largest share. Comiso, which SAC also runs, took a smaller slice. Trapani took the rest of the island overflow. Delta’s New York JFK arrival was the one long-haul exception, landing at Fiumicino.

WHERE THE FLIGHTS WENT

Low-cost carriers filled most of those Palermo and Trapani slots. For a family that had bought a Catania ticket, the day became a coach or hire-car transfer across the island, then a scramble for bags at a field that had not planned to receive them. Palermo gains the landings and the terminal crush. Comiso gains a few movements without gaining a full hub. Catania loses the day.

A Four-Hour Hire to Comiso Cost €337

The same transfer economy blew out road prices during the longer August shutdown. Codacons, the consumer group, ran a four-hour hire on 13 August, from 13:00 to 17:00, long enough to drive from Fontanarossa to another Sicilian airport, then repeated the same car and drop-off for 27 August. It filed a complaint with Italy’s competition authority, asking whether the jump was speculation against travellers who had no other way off the tarmac.

CODACONS HIRE CHECK

Codacons put the Comiso gap at 287%. The authority had not issued a finding. Taxi quotes moved the same way in August, which is why a later shutdown does not only reroute aircraft. It reroutes the bill for getting between the runways that are still open.

Why Ash at 4 Kilometres Grounds a Runway

Fontanarossa sits about 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of the summit. When winds at altitude blow the plume that way, the closed boxes are the southern sectors, C1 and B3. INGV estimated the 14 September cloud at 4 kilometres. Boris Behncke, a researcher at the INGV Etna Observatory, has been blunt about why airlines will not push through it.

Volcanic ash can be a great risk for aircraft. It can be sucked into the motors, and force them to stall. This is why everyone is so very cautious with aircraft when there is a volcanic ash emission.

Boris Behncke, researcher, INGV Etna Observatory

A red VONA is not a closure order. It is a four-colour aviation warning. Catania closes when ash is in the approach and departure corridors, which is why the field can keep running on some red days and stop on others. The Etna aviation colour-code notices through early September flipped between orange and red on 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 14 September, then again after the reopen. On 18 September INGV cut the code back to orange, said explosive activity at the summit craters was easing, and said the phase was not affecting Vincenzo Bellini operations.

August Already Offloaded 600 Arrivals

The September stoppage was short next to August. SAC said 36% of nearly 2,000 flights due to arrive between 6 and 12 August were cancelled, with over 600 diverted to Palermo, Trapani, Comiso and Lamezia Terme in Calabria. The field was shut for five days in a row, the longest such emergency since 2002, and the halt ran through Ferragosto, the 15 August holiday week when Italian traffic peaks.

Behncke wrote in late August that explosive activity at the Voragine crater ran, with swings, from 6 August through the morning of 15 August, throwing off large amounts of ash. Wind pushed that ash into the southern sector and caused serious problems for Catania, he said, with visitors’ flights moved or cancelled. He had already told travellers the summer was unlike the shorter, stronger bursts of past decades, because the summit ash this time had been much more persistent.

Italy as a whole puts 41% of yearly passenger traffic in June to September, and 11% in August, according to ENAC, the civil aviation authority. A five-day hole in that window is why Palermo’s terminal queued for everything in mid-August, and why hire desks could post those Comiso numbers.

Catania Is Italy’s Fifth-Busiest Airport

ENAC’s 2025 traffic report counted 12,363,135 passengers in 2025 at Catania Fontanarossa, up 0.2% on 2024. That is 5% of Italy’s commercial-airport total and fifth place behind Rome Fiumicino, Milan Malpensa, Bergamo and Naples. Palermo, the airport that keeps inheriting the ash days, handled 9,243,939 passengers.

The backups are not built to the same scale. Trapani Birgi handled 1,015,434 passengers in 2025. Comiso handled 135,300, down 48.5%. Travel agents can demand that Comiso become eastern Sicily’s spare hub. On paper it is still a small field that shrinks in a normal year and only swells when Fontanarossa goes dark. SAC wears both hats, so a diversion to Comiso is, in part, an internal shift. The volume, the queues and the missed connections still sit in Palermo.

ENAC’s Backup Plan Meets an Old Argument

Carlo Mearelli, ENAC’s extraordinary commissioner, said in Naples on 14 September that Etna’s activity is a problem to be managed, not suffered, and that Sicily needs a structured backup, which he called indispensable. SAC later took a regional-network plan to an ENAC meeting in Rome on the summer emergency, aimed at faster coordination with the regional infrastructure department and civil protection.

BACKUP PLANS ON THE TABLE

• Structured backup: Mearelli wants the alternate-airport system planned as a network, not improvised after each red notice.
• Move Fontanarossa: Civil Protection minister Nello Musumeci said what is out of place is not the volcano but the airport, a line he has pushed since a 1999 provincial plan.
• Build up Comiso: The Italian travel agents’ association AIAV asked transport minister Matteo Salvini to make Comiso the eastern Sicily pole.
• A central-island field: Piero Capizzi, president of Enna’s free municipal consortium, called a meeting for 22 September on a Dittaino airport study first drawn in 2008.

Salvini’s own answer during the August chaos was the Strait of Messina bridge, which does not staff a diversion desk at Punta Raisi tonight. A future span also does not create year-round frequencies at Trapani, which can take overflow only if airlines already fly there. The argument on the island after the TGR footage from Fontanarossa in August was simpler than any of those files: fix the other airports before the next plume turns south.

Capizzi set that Enna meeting for 22 September, after Fontanarossa had already gone dark on the 14th and reopened on the 15th.