AN airport in a popular Italian holiday resort has been forced to close due to fires burning dangerously close to its runways.
Wildfires raged around Palermo airport in Sicily on Tuesday, as extreme weather continued to batter the country.
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Severe storms have caused damage and at least two deaths in the north of Italy.
The airport in the Sicilian capital was forced to shut until at least 11am local time, its operator said on Twitter, as firefighters worked to put out a major blaze.
Several flights in and out of the airport have had to be cancelled as a result, with Euronews reporting that more than 70 wildfires had broken out in the region in the last 24 hours.
Other flights have been rerouted to Trapani airport, while some have simply been delayed until further notice.
The incident added to Sicily’s travel misery at the peak of the tourist season.
The island’s main airport of Catania, Italy’s fifth-biggest, was closed last week due to a fire in a terminal building and has reopened only for a few flights.
UK airlines are having to reroute their flights to other airports in the region, while Jet2 have cancelled all routes to and from Catania until next month.
Catania’s Vincenzo Bellini Airport has both inbound and outbound flights to a total of 91 destinations and 100,000s passengers are expected to be hit by the cancellations altogether.
The disruption is the result of a fire that broke out on in Terminal A last Sunday night, in which no one was injured and the cause of which remains unknown.
The airport reopened on Monday (July 24) but still has limited access, with only four flights permitted to land per hour until Wednesday, July 26.
The latest fires come as a heatwave has hit southern Europe, with scorching temperatures bringing increased risk of fires and deaths.
In some parts of eastern Sicily, temperatures rose to 47.6C on Monday, close to a record European high of 48.8C recorded on the island two years ago.
On Tuesday, Italy put 16 cities on red alert because of the high temperatures.
These include Palermo and Catania, where power and water supply cuts that local officials blamed in part on the heat have been frequent in recent days.
Elsewhere, on Monday, a Delta flight headed to New York which had taken off from Milan’s Malpensa airport was seriously damaged by hailstorm and forced to land in Rome.
Meanwhile passengers make this big mistake when their plane is delayed or cancelled.
And here’s how to get refunds if your flight is grounded.
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