Argentina and Uruguay both suspended flights at major airports yesterday due to dangerous ash from neighbouring Chile’s Puyehue volcano, which has disrupted global travel since it erupted earlier this year.
Authorities suspended or cancelled numerous international flights at the Ezeiza airport south of Buenos Aires, hours after shutting off Jorge Newbery airport in the capital.
In Uruguay, 15 international flights were cancelled at Montevideo’s international Carrasco airport, largely affecting flights to Chile and neighbouring Argentina and Brazil.
Argentina’s transport secretary Juan Pablo Schiavi told local television that “we need the ash cloud to pass” before airlines resume their operations,
Argentina’s LAN airline said that international as well as domestic flights were affected, including routes to Mendoza on the steps of the Andes mountains toward the Chilean border, and Ushuaia in the far south.
Air traffic in the southern hemisphere has been hit hard in recent months, paralysing airports in Buenos Aires and Montevideo and later those in Australia and New Zealand, when the volcano high in the Andes erupted in June after being dormant for half a century.