Hundreds of passengers have camped out at the San Jose airport waiting, waiting, waiting for the airport to re-open. Many others have been heading to the airport, not aware of the closure.
A check on the Aeris (airport operator) website, when the website is not down for too much traffic, a number of flights show cancelled, while others continue as normal, but important to call your airline for a status.
For those flying to San Jose by way of a stop, be aware that your flight might depart as scheduled, but may have the spend the night at the stop point, such as San Salvador or Panama. Flights may also be diverted to Liberia (Costa Rica), 3 to 4 hours by land from San Jose. Check with your airline.
As of 8:00am this morning (Tuesday) more than 100 flights have been cancelled or delayed since Monday morning, when airport operations were suspended due to the two early morning eruptions of the Turrialba volcano. A third eruption at noon and then minutes after 4:00pm maintained the suspension, with only a 30 minute window (from 4:30pm to 5:00pm) that airport operations were resumed.
Aeris has announced the airport would be re-opened at 8:00am, updated to 11:00am and currently “until further notice”.
Two more eruptions this Tuesday morning and winds blowing in a westerly directions (towards Alajuela where the airport is located) are expected to “complicate” clean up operations and the re-opening of the airport.
The closure is for the safety of passengers and the crew.
