More than a dozen flights to and from Tauranga have been cancelled on Tuesday due to volcanic ash from Whakaari\/White Island.<\/p>\n
GeoNet had the volcano at Alert Level 3, denoting a minor volcanic eruption, and images showed a plume of steam and ash reaching over a kilometre high.<\/p>\n
Air New Zealand’s chief safety officer Nathan McGraw said 16 flights were been cancelled.<\/p>\n
Customers will be rebooked onto the next available service, he said.<\/p>\n
Earth Sciences NZ volcanologist Michael Rosenberg said the steam and ash was normal activity and didn’t suggest a larger eruption.<\/p>\n
“This is very typical of what we’ve seen intermittently over the past few decades,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The fact that it’s looking pretty steady suggests that it’s a fairly open vent system, it’s not been blocked off and building up to something large.”<\/p>\n
At least seven flights to Tauranga that were scheduled to depart from Auckland Airport had been marked as cancelled on the airport’s website.<\/p>\n
It comes just a week after volcanic activity disrupted flights at Tauranga Airport.<\/p>\n
Rosenberg said there had been a recent increase in volcanic activity, but it wasn’t any cause for concern.<\/p>\n
“For the last few weeks we have seen a bit of a change, but the amount of ash coming out is really very small, and the plume of ash and steam and gas is rising to a kilometre, a kilometre and a half,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said the volcanic activity was “very passive”.<\/p>\n
“There’s not a lot of ash being carried in that plume, but it’s certainly disrupting air traffic in the Bay of Plenty region,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We can’t say whether it’s going to lead to something larger, but we’re monitoring everything as closely as we can.”<\/p>\n