'I was on easyJet Sicily flight when Mount Etna erupted - passengers panicked'

A passenger has told how people on his easyJet flight from the UK panicked after seeing the which erupted today as they flew into Sicily.

The 33-year-old dad looked on as the plane passed by Sicily and he could see on a clear day with the grey clouds of ash above it. He took a photo at around 10.30am with the, while volcanic tremors began around midnight local time. But he said that most passengers began "panicking" once the plane, which had taken off from Edinburgh, had landed and checked their phones as he thinks they didn't realise what had happened.

The dad from Currie told : "If I’m honest, I don’t think anyone knew at all what was going on, and I didn’t want to alarm anyone by announcing that I thought that was the volcano erupting! It wasn’t until we landed and checked our phones that everyone started panicking a little bit."

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The level of alert due to the volcanic activity was raised at the Catania airport, but no immediate interruptions were reported. An official update declared the ash cloud emission had ended by the afternoon.

The volcano is a popular tourist destination visited by nearly 1.5 million people per year. The UNESCO World Heritage site is one of the most active volcanoes in the , with its documented eruptive history dating back at least 2,700 years.

Etna experienced another large eruption earlier this year in February, which saw lava flows disrupt visitors and brought skiing on the island to a halt.

Italy’s INGV National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the spectacle on Europe’s most active volcano was caused when part of the southeast crater collapsed, resulting in hot lava flows. It was the 14th eruptive phase in recent months.

The area of danger was confined to the summit of Etna, which was closed to tourists as a precaution, according to Stefano Branca, an INGV official in Catania.

Sicily’s president, Renato Schifani, said lava flows emitted in the eruption had not passed the natural containment area, “and posed no danger to the population.”

The event was also captured in video and photos from the ground that went viral on social media. Tremors from the eruption were widely felt in the towns and villages on Mount Etna’s flanks, Italian media reported.

Video showed tourists running along a path on the flank of the vast volcano with smoke billowing some distance in the background. Excursions are popular on Etna, which is some 3,300 meters (nearly 11,000 feet) high, with a surface area of some 460 square miles.