Buenos Aires - A thick cloud of ash from a Chilean volcano brought airports to a halt in Argentina and neighbouring Uruguay on Thursday, forcing airlines to cancel dozens of flights, airport officials said.
A volcano dormant for decades erupted in south-central Chile during the weekend, belching an ash cloud that blew over the Andes and has been disrupting air traffic in South America for days.
“Due to the movement over the Buenos Aires metropolitan area of a new ash cloud from the Puyehue volcano, flights (to and from) the Ezeiza and Aeroparque airports have been cancelled,” the transport authority said in a statement.
Buenos Aires is a key air hub for South America, with dozens of daily flights to other countries in the region, as well as Europe and the United States.
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica suspended a visit to Buenos Aires because flying conditions were unsafe, a government spokesperson told Reuters, and a meeting of South American finance ministers and central bankers due on Friday was called off.
As well as the two airports serving the capital, seven regional airports in Argentina were closed due to the blinding ash cloud. Officials said airports will not resume operations until flying conditions are safe again.
The Bariloche ski resort in southern Argentina was coated in ash and people were asked to stay indoors and not to drive because of poor visibility.
The Montevideo airport was also shut because ash fanned by the wind darkened the skies in the South American nation.
Brazilian airlines TAM and Gol, as well as Chile's LAN, suspended all flights to and from airports in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the companies said.
The Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain in south-central Chile has about 2 000 volcanoes and is the world's second largest after Indonesia.
It was the latest in a series of volcanic eruptions in Chile in recent years. Chile's Chaiten volcano erupted spectacularly in 2008 for the first time in thousands of years, spewing molten rock and a vast cloud of ash that reached the stratosphere. - Reuters