An American magazine editor's Sicilian vacation ended with a canceled flight, an 11-hour overnight train ride, and a ferry crossing after Mount Etna's volcanic ash shut down Catania's airport during peak summer travel season.
Julie Sagoskin, editor-in-chief of New York City, based Park Magazine, arrived in Sicily on Aug. 1 for what was supposed to be a relaxed trip around the island. She spent more than a week visiting sites across Sicily before heading to Catania International Airport on Aug. 10 for her flight home. The airport had other plans.
Sagoskin told Fox News Digital that the bad news came fast.
"Right when we arrived at the airport, we did get a notice that our flight was canceled."
A member of her travel group who had reached the airport earlier described the scene as "total chaos." Sagoskin and her companions retreated to a hotel near the airport to regroup and figure out how to get off the island.
Sagoskin's canceled flight was not an isolated hiccup. Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, had been spewing ash for days, and the fallout hit Catania's airport, Sicily's largest, squarely during Italy's peak Ferragosto holiday week. Between Aug. 6 and Aug. 12, more than a third of the 1,974 scheduled flights at the airport were canceled, according to Reuters data cited in the Fox News report. Thousands of travelers were disrupted, and some passengers spent days waiting for seats on rebooked flights.
AP News reported that the airport had been closed for five consecutive days, the longest such closure since 2002. Over 600 flights were diverted to other Sicilian and mainland Italian airports during the disruption window. Boris Behncke, a researcher at Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology's Etna Observatory, explained the stakes plainly: volcanic ash can be sucked into jet engines and force them to stall, which is why aviation authorities take no chances when Etna blows.
The volcano's timing could hardly have been worse. Ferragosto, the Aug. 15 holiday that marks the height of Italy's summer vacation season, draws millions of domestic and international travelers to Sicily each year. Stranding them at the island's busiest airport during the busiest week created a logistical pileup that airlines and airport operators struggled to manage.
Italy has raised its alert level on Etna in recent months as the volcano has shown repeated bursts of activity, a reminder that building a major travel hub next to one of the world's most active volcanoes carries inherent risk.
With no flights available out of Catania, Sagoskin made a decision. She booked an approximately 11-hour overnight train from Catania to Rome, planning to catch a flight home from there the next day.
The train ride came with its own surprises. Because Sicily is an island, the train was loaded onto a ferry to cross the water to the Italian mainland, a detail Sagoskin had not anticipated. Parts of the journey also lacked air conditioning.
She was not the only American caught up in the disruption. Whoopi Goldberg was also stranded in Sicily by the same eruption, leaving her ABC talk show short-handed back in New York.
Sagoskin's friends in the travel group had it worse. Some had planned to fly out two days before her, around Aug. 8, but their flights were also canceled. They returned to rejoin Sagoskin's group and wait it out. Others in the group experienced additional cancellations, overnight stays, and lost luggage as they scrambled for alternatives. Some routed through Palermo, on Sicily's western coast, to find open flights.
Sagoskin herself made it to Rome and flew home on Aug. 11, one day later than her original schedule. Compared to travelers who spent multiple days stranded at Catania, she got off relatively easy.
Gian Mario Pilieri, president of FIAVET, an Italian travel industry association, pointed to a structural problem beyond any single eruption. He said operators were "working around the clock to provide assistance, cancellations and alternative travel arrangements," but added that they "cannot bear the burden of structural shortcomings and the management responsibilities of others." The comment suggested that Italy's contingency planning for volcanic disruptions at Catania, an airport that sits roughly 30 miles from one of the most frequently erupting volcanoes on Earth, remains inadequate.
That criticism carries weight. The five-day closure was the worst since 2002, but Etna erupts regularly. A magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck southern Italy during a recent Etna eruption, underscoring the region's volatile geology. Travelers booking flights through Catania are, in effect, betting that Europe's most active volcano will stay quiet long enough for them to get in and out.
Sagoskin acknowledged the helplessness of the situation.
"You're in a foreign country, first of all. It's obviously a big... natural disaster. So there's nothing anybody can do about this."
She offered practical advice for anyone who finds themselves in a similar spot: commit to a plan and stick with it. Trying to juggle multiple rebooking options while stranded in a foreign country only adds confusion.
"I think you have to come up with one plan and stick to it."
Mount Etna's hazards are not limited to ash clouds and grounded flights. Earlier this year, an American tourist was killed by lightning after hiking into a restricted volcanic zone on the mountain, a stark reminder that the volcano demands respect from visitors and authorities alike.
Despite the chaos, Sagoskin kept her sense of proportion. She described the disrupted trip as "a trip upon a trip" and said she and her companions would remember the experience for a lifetime.
"We got out safely."
She summed up the whole episode with the kind of levelheaded perspective that seasoned travelers tend to reach only after the fact.
"Things can happen in life at any time. You just have to... make decisions, be prepared and move on."
Good advice, and a useful reminder that no amount of planning can account for a volcano. But when a known, active volcano sits next door to a major international airport, the question is not whether disruptions will happen again. It is whether anyone in charge will have a better answer next time.
