I first flew into Catania in early October 1989 en route to
speak at a conference of Italian geographers being held in Taormina. There were
no direct flights from the UK at the time, so I had flown into Rome and changed
onto a very full internal flight down to Sicily. It was dark when we took off
from Fiumicino. Soon after reaching cruising altitude the pilot announced, in
Italian, that for reasons everyone was aware of we might not be able to land at
Catania. A groan arose from various
parts of the plane, but the person sitting next to me had fallen fast asleep so
I couldn’t ask him what this was about.
I imagined there might be a strike at Catania Airport. Thirty minutes later, as we started our
descent, the pilot came back on the intercom to say that we would all be
delighted to know that we had been cleared for landing. A general ripple of satisfaction went round
the plane, and when we actually landed the round of applause was perhaps louder
than usual. (Almost thirty years later, flying into Catania again a couple of
nights ago, I was amused to observe that the Italian custom of applauding the
return to earth is still in force.)
There was no air bridge to use on that October night in
1989, and crossing the tarmac from the plane to the terminal I quickly realised
what the issue had been – Mount Etna was in eruption. Thin volcanic ash was raining down on us and
after even a 100 metre walk in the open air my jacket had a thin film of dust
on it. No doubt the pilot had not wanted
to risk the ingestion of large amounts of ash into the plane’s engines if there
was a sudden ejection of material from the volcano.
That evening I took the last bus from the airport to
Taormina, as the only passenger. The bus
toured the streets of central Catania but no one got on at any appointed
stop. Indeed, there was almost no one on
the streets at all. The bars and restaurants we passed were all closed, the
grey houses were shuttered, and the whole city seemed turned in on itself, the
dark tufa houses, built of volcanic lava, giving the place a ghostly air. I imagined a reason beyond the volcano for
the deserted streets. I had read a few
days earlier that Catania’s current homicide rate that year was running higher
than that of Palermo: perhaps that was another cause for people to stay in
their houses and apartments.
The bus driver and I eventually left Catania to take the autostrada north, and the sight on our left was
spellbinding, with tongues of glowing lava snaking down the side of Etna
towards us. I had never seen anything like it, and still haven’t 30 years
later. Overall my arrival in Catania had
been one of the most unusual of my life.
Since that 1989 visit to Sicily I have flown in and out of
Catania Airport several times, and seen it expand greatly. But I once witnessed something else untoward
there.
It was during one of the periodic crises when the Italian
airline Alitalia was believed to be
about to go bankrupt and to lay off its staff.
Dismayed though they might be at their plight, there was no excuse for
the lackadaisical attitude they were adopting towards their duties that day in
September 2004. I was flying up from
Catania to Milan Malpensa where I would change for a flight to London. I sat in the terminal near the appointed gate
and at the next gate passengers were assembling for a flight to Rome
Fiumicino. The two relevant planes stood
on the tarmac in front of us. Boarding
was called for both within a few minutes of each other. But the two queues of passengers needed to
cross each other on the tarmac (again no air bridges were being used) to reach
the correct plane – the Rome plane stood directly in front of the Milan gate
and vice versa.
The Alitalia staff
were expressing little interest in their jobs (actually something I have
observed with them over many years – even when their airline has not been in
deep financial trouble). And so it was
that as my Milan plane taxied out to the runway and the captain came on the
intercom to welcome everyone to the flight to Malpensa, two passengers stood up
and shouted that they were going to Rome.
No they weren’t – the Rome plane was ahead of us in the queue to take
off. Clearly the crew had not properly
checked the boarding passes of everyone getting on, and nor had they tallied
the passenger manifest against the schedule
of those who had checked in. The
Rome-bound passengers were told they would have to fly to Milan where someone
would help them get back to Rome: I doubt there was much help or sympathy offered
despite the ultimate responsibility of the airline staff for not averting their
plight.
In a week’s time I will be flying out of Catania once
again. I shall be very careful to get on
the right plane.
But it has been on this visit that I have actually got to
know the real Catania, and corrected my dark impressions from 1989. I have stayed in the city for the first time,
rather than using the airport as a staging point to get somewhere else in
Sicily. And I have been very
impressed. Catania is a city of style, of
self-confidence, of good humour, and of efficiency. It lives in Etna’s shadow and a lot of its monumental
architecture is baroque in style and dates from the city’s rebuilding after an
earthquake of 1693 topping a century that had seen disastrous lava flows a few
decades earlier. The suburban apartment
blocks on the outskirts are no better or worse than those of dozens of Italian
cities, but the villas and blocks to the north along the coast present a vision
of wealth and opulence. But what surprised me most about Catania today is that
it has clearly become a tourist destination – not just for Italians but for
Germans, French, British and many other nationalities. However, the gardens of the Villa Bellini
still belong to local joggers at 8 in the morning, and the market to the east
of the Via Etnea is as Sicilian as one could want – as is the fish market in
the centre near the Cathedral. But look
up the length of Via Etnea, which bisects the city, and you see the snow-capped
summit of Etna with a wisp of smoke attacehd.
I wonder how many residents or visitors to Catania have the sense that
the city still lives on borrowed time: the volcano could strike again at any
time, or seismicity associated with it could bring another major
earthquake. As in October 1989, ‘for
reasons you are all aware of, we may not be able to land at Catania.’
