The month of August has had been a particularly tough one when it comes to weather and flying.
The eruption of the Mount Etna volcano on the Italian island of Sicily sent a giant ash cloud into the sky around the nearby Catania-Fontanarossa Airport and grounded dozens of flights off the island while rapidly-spreading wildfires on Maui led one pilot on vacation to volunteer to help evacuate people off the island.
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Over in Germany, a day of heavy rain has also wreaked havoc both on flights and Frankfurt International Airport itself. On Aug. 16, the city of Frankfurt saw more than two-and-a-half inches of rain within three hours.
Had quite a few DM’s from people wondering why flights were diverting away from Frankfurt….here’s your answer 👇💦
— Flight Emergency (@FlightEmergency) August 16, 2023
pic.twitter.com/05ZAoFO2WN
Viral video captures Lufthansa plane standing deep in water
This, in turn, caused flooding in parts of the city and the runways at Frankfurt's airport. As Frankfurt is one of Europe's busiest airports and a major hub for travelers coming from and going all over the world, over a thousand passengers were left temporarily stranded after the airport canceled more than 70 flights.
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An additional 23 flights headed to Frankfurt were diverted to other airports in the area. Local broadcaster Hessische Rundfunk reported that there were also over 25,000 lightning strikes an hour during that time.
At the same time, a viral video of a Lufthansa (DLAKF) -) plane standing on the tarmac deep in water as more rain continues to fall has started circulating on social media.
"Had quite a few DM's from people wondering why flights were diverting away from Frankfurt..." UK-based flight tracker FlightEmergency wrote on Twitter alongside the footage. "Here's your answer."
Similar scenes were captured by news website Disaster News and collectively racked up millions of views.
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The situation eventually cleared up and, a day later, flights were coming in and out of Frankfurt International Airport as usual. But the video of the plane continues to circulate on social media for its apocalyptic look.
"It was quite frankly terrifying," Benn Chatt, who was on a flight scheduled to fly into Frankfurt during the heavy rains, recalled in a Facebook post. "Our youngest child threw up as the plane bounced and shook. The pilot made the correct decision to abort and took us back above the clouds and diverted to Stuttgart. It was annoying at the time but looking at these pictures it appears we got off lightly."
At the start of the summer, severe weather conditions have also caused similar problems in airports across the east coast of the U.S. Due to heavy thunderstorms starting on June 27 and lasting almost a week, more than 17,000 flights into New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Atlanta were delayed or canceled entirely.
United Airlines (UAL) -) alone canceled more than 400 of its flights while airlines such as Republic Airways, Endeavor Air and JetBlue (JBLU) -) also canceled hundreds. At the same time, an early-summer heat wave across the Midwest also caused some cancelations in parts of Texas and Oklahoma.
