Sicily, Mount Etna eruptions, and RS Sicily tours

Interesting.
This current ash situation hasn't been in the news, but the eruption a while back was. I was on that tour last March, I think flight interruptions due to Etna are rare. I guess one could make arrangements to fly out of Palermo as a matter of course, but that wouldn't negate the need to take a 3 hour bus ride.

Travel is an adventure sometimes, glad things worked out, and a little jealous that you saw Etna in action.

Liz, yes we took it in stride, and it actually added to the experience - some independent travel. We had interesting interaction with our taxi driver, and saw parts of Sicily very different from what was on the tour.

Quite an experience! CTA is a challenge without problems, totally chaotic. PMO is much better. Glad you got home and had a tour of Sicily's countryside as well.
We spent a week in Ortigia, Siracusa in October and don’t think there is any airport there rather a helicopter pad.

follow up: I heard from a couple of other members of our group that did get out on flights later that evening. All depends on which way the wind is blowing.

Hey Stan! Our family also did the great race across Sicily to get to Palermo to get to our connecting flight in Rome the next day. Gabe thought it was great fun. Our taxi driver was doing minimum 85mph (according to our conversions) and sometimes had no hands on the wheel while gesturing with his hands. Glad to hear you all got back home. The tour was amazing and totally worth Mama Etna being a bit naugtly. She sure made some amazing pictures! All the best- Kristin

Hi Kristin. We saw two other pairs from the tour at the Palermo airport who had made the flying taxi ride as well - Linda and David, and Diane and LeeAnn. Yeah, I was sitting up front and watched the speedometer go to 180 km/hr sometimes. We passed the bus that left CTA an hour before us sometime before Palermo. I'm considering that as part of the "Through the Back Door" experience.

My goodness!! I have reservations to fly into Catania on May 8 and out of Palermo on May 28. How does one find out the state of the volcano as I get closer to my trip?

It's a fact of life that if you are near an active volcano, you can't be sure. I was told it is not infrequent that flighs in/out of Catania are cancelled bbecause of Etna's ash. There's no way to know in advance. It's an active volcano! The only way to be sure is to plan to fly in/out of Palermo.

When I visited - on my own, no tour - I flew international into Palermo, via Rome, and left from Catania to mainland Italy for another week. I figured the worse case would be that I'd spend more time in Siracusa and less time in Bologna if Etna closed the airport.

lynn, as we found out, the impact of the ash plume from Mt Etna on flights from/to Catania is dependent on which way the wind is blowing. Its unpredictable. You can only note that your booking airline should be on top of it, and hope they redirect or rebook you into Palermo if necessary. But they wont know if they need to do that until the airport authorities tell them the daily/hourly status. If you read lizthemadhatter's Trip Report on the Sicily tour, you'll see that some flights on our trip were cancelled in the morning while others flew on schedule. I believe the Catania airport maintains a website where you can see some current information on Etna impacts, but not predictive.

If you are up for adventure, instead of going all the way across Sicily back to Palermo, what about traveling up the east coast and taking the brief (20 minutes) ferry to Reggio Calabria and flying out of there? Cheap and easy way to see another lovely and relatively unknown part of Italy while still getting to your final destination.