NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Ash plumes from a volcanic eruption in Ethiopia covered parts of Pakistan and northern India on Tuesday, forcing Air India and Akasa Air to cancel some flights as a precaution.
The Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia’s Afar region erupted on Sunday for the first time in recorded history, sending ash plumes up to 14 km (8.7 miles) into the sky, seismologists said
The ash had blanketed parts of Pakistan and northern India on Tuesday after crossing Yemen and Oman, according to tracking website Flightradar24, and was moving towards China.
The India Meteorological Department said earlier it was expected to clear Indian skies by 1400 GMT.
Air India said it had cancelled 11 flights on Monday and Tuesday to make precautionary checks on aircraft that had flown over some locations after the eruption, following a directive to airlines from India’s aviation regulator.
Smaller peer Akasa said it had scrapped scheduled flights to Middle East destinations such as Jeddah, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi scheduled during the two days.
India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation said that only a few flights had been rerouted as a precautionary measure, and that the airports authority had issued a notice to all affected planes.
Ethiopia has about 50 active volcanoes, Atalay Ayele, a seismologist and researcher at the Institute of Geophysics, Space Science and Astronomy at Addis Ababa University, told Reuters.
“At any time, these volcanoes can be active or can show manifestations of activity,” he said.
(Reporting by Abhijith Ganapavaram and Komal Salecha; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Michael Perry and Jan Harvey and Alison Williams)
