Air Serbia Reroutes Catania Flights Over Etna Ash
Air Serbia lands in Lamezia Terme, Calabria instead of Catania on Friday, busing and ferrying passengers on to Sicily after Catania Fontanarosa Airport closed over ash from Mount Etna.
About 700 flights have been grounded at Catania Fontanarosa Airport since Mount Etna’s eruptive phase intensified in early August, and Air Serbia is among the carriers adjusting its schedule as a result. The national carrier is rerouting both of Friday’s, August 14, flights between Belgrade and Catania to Lamezia Terme airport in Calabria, since the Sicilian airport remains closed because of volcanic ash.
Flight JU4438 on the Belgrade to Lamezia Terme route is scheduled for 1:25 PM local time. The return flight, JU4439, departs Lamezia Terme for Belgrade at 4:00 PM. Buses for passengers waiting in Catania for the return leg start running from that airport as early as 8:30 AM, several hours before the plane from Belgrade even lands in Calabria. The airline has arranged bus transfers and ferry service on the Catania to Lamezia Terme route in both directions.
The airline’s statement also described what awaits passengers after landing:
“Upon landing at the airport, passengers will be directed by ground handling agents to buses marked with the Air Serbia sign, which will take them to Catania airport.”
Passengers who bought their tickets through travel agencies are told by Air Serbia to contact their agency for the exact time and departure point of the buses. It is a solution the airline industry turns to when an alternative airport is close enough for a ground transfer to make sense, and when canceling the flight outright would also mean losing the aircraft’s return load for the day.
How Many Flights Have Been Grounded Since the Eruption Intensified?
Figures from the airport operator, SAC, show the scale of the disruption. 400 departures were canceled between August 8 and 11, with another 52 canceled on August 12. Adding canceled arrivals, the total loss from the intensified eruptive phase comes to about 700 flights.
More than 250 flights have been diverted to other airports:
- over 100 to Comiso since the start of the emergency
- about 50 to Palermo on August 11 alone
- 22 to Trapani
For August 12, SAC reported 50 departures from alternative airports, including 33 from Palermo, 14 from Trapani and three from Comiso, while 40 arrivals were diverted to Palermo, 12 to Trapani and five to Comiso. Comiso itself briefly suspended operations on the evening of August 11 because of falling ash, before returning to full operation.
Arrivals and departures at Catania were suspended until 2:00 AM local time on August 14, after Italian authorities extended the closure of the affected airspace to sector B3. Most of the schedule changes fell on Ryanair, easyJet, ITA Airways and Wizz Air, the four largest operators at Catania, whose networks across southern Italy are running at the peak of the summer season.
Why Does Ash Ground Flights?
Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology reported that the eruptive phase is continuing from vents at roughly 2,750 and 2,360 meters above sea level, with extensive lava fields, but that ash, not lava, is what threatens air traffic. The aviation warning code for Etna has stayed red, the highest level.
Ash is abrasive and damages engines, sensors and windshields, so airlines in these conditions do not rely on a judgment call from the cockpit but on the closure of entire airspace sectors. The ash cloud spread from Sicily toward eastern Malta and northern Libya, and Valletta airport reported cancellations and delays overnight into August 12.
Catania has been through this same scenario before. In the eruption of May 2023, 68 flights were canceled in a single day. Italy’s Minister for Civil Protection, Nelo Musumeci, said the repeated closures at Catania and Comiso revive an old question about how exposed the local airport system is, one he himself raised years earlier while serving as president of the Province of Catania.
Sicily is a seasonal route for Air Serbia, one of the summer destinations in a network the airline has been expanding in recent years, the same network we covered when it was announced that starting October 25 the carrier takes over routes from Nis to Vienna and Malta. The next piece of information that will decide the weekend schedule will not come from the airline but from the airport: word from operator SAC on whether the airspace above eastern Sicily reopens after 2:00 AM Friday, or whether the closure runs into another round.
