Chilean volcano ash causes more travel disruption

Flights from major airports across a large section of south America were cancelled yesterday as ash from Chile’s Puyehue volcano spread across the region, nearly one week after the volcano erupted for the first time in half a century.

Flights from airports in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and southern Brazilian cities were grounded due to clouds of ash high in the sky.

It was the second straight day that flights were cancelled out of Montevideo and Buenos Aires, a major regional transportation hub.

Argentine authorities said they hope the ash cloud will have passed above Buenos Aires late yesterday, and that some flights could resume. However most southern air terminals will remain closed “until the weather situation improves,” officials said.

Flights were grounded across Uruguay, though there was a slim chance that they could resume this morning, a spokesman at Montevideo’s Carrasco International Airport told AFP.

Yesterday, the ash cloud was above Rio Grande do Sul state, sailing between 7,000 and 10,000 metres above the ground, Brazilian aviation officials said.

“If the current weather pattern continues the cloud will likely head over the Atlantic Ocean,” the officials said in a statement.

Airports in the Brazilian cities of Porto Alegre, Curitiba and Florianopolis were open, but “the airline companies decided to not fly for security reasons due to the volcanic ash,” a spokesman for the government airport authority Infraero told AFP.

Some flights were also cancelled at the Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro international airports.

Volcanic ash “is very dangerous, very abrasive for plane engines, and could result in very serious complications,” Argentine Transportation Secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi warned earlier.The volcano, which rumbled to life on Saturday for the first time since 1960, is high in the Andes mountains, 870 kilometres south of the Chilean capital Santiago, near the border with Argentina.