Ash from Chilean volcano causes flight cancellations again in Brazil.
Passengers on LAN, Gol, and TAM airlines are the most affected; there is no forecast for the resumption of normal air traffic.
São Paulo International Airport in Guarulhos has already registered ten canceled departures and three canceled arrivals after ash from the Puyehe volcano in Chile has once again approached the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, according to information from the Brazilian Airport Infrastructure Company (Infraero). The canceled flights are from the airlines LAN, Gol, and TAM. The ash is interfering with operations at airports in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Flights were affected from 8:25 am to 12:15 pm this Thursday. TAM informed in a statement that it has canceled operations at the airports in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Asunción. The company states that it will continue to analyze the weather conditions to resume operations as quickly as possible.
Galeão Airport, in the northern part of Rio de Janeiro, had four arrivals canceled – three from Buenos Aires and one from Santiago – by Aerolíneas Argentinas, TAM, and LAN. Five departures were also suspended – four to Buenos Aires and one to Montevideo – by Gol, TAM, Aerolíneas Argentinas, and Pluna. Infraero (the Brazilian airport authority) was unable to confirm whether the canceled flights between midnight and those scheduled until 14 PM at Galeão were related to the volcanic ash.
Argentina
The volcanic ash cloud from Chile has once again affected Argentina, particularly the Buenos Aires area, impacting operations at Jorge Newbery Airport and Ezeiza International Airport, where all departures and arrivals have been canceled until at least 10:30 AM (same time as Brasília), reports the newspaper Clarín on its website.
Flights operated by Aerolíneas Argentinas, Austral, and LAN were not operating this morning at both airports due to the presence of ash from the Chilean volcano Puyehue in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, according to the Argentine newspaper Clarín. At Ezeiza, virtually all flights scheduled for this morning are canceled or delayed, according to Clarín, which attributes the information to the agency that regulates flights in the country, Aeropuertos Argentina 2000.
Furthermore, the newspaper highlights that the Ministry of Transportation announced in a statement this morning that the airports of Bariloche, Chapelco, Esquel, Trelew, Viedma, Neuquén, and Bahía Blanca remain closed. The previous evening, the Argentine National Civil Aviation Administration (ANAC) had anticipated problems if the weather conditions persisted. The newspaper does not provide a forecast for when the situation will improve.
On Tuesday, the presence of ash caused the cancellation of all flights in Buenos Aires for ten hours. The city most affected by the ash from Puyehe is Bariloche, the main ski resort in Latin America, located just 90 kilometers from the volcano's crater.