A tourist flying over Iceland on Thursday morning got the view of a lifetime after her easyJet flight gave a perfect panoramic of the country’s latest volcano eruption.
Posting on X, West Ham fan Kayleigh, from Bedford, shared her stunning footage of Sundhnúks crater on the Reykjanes peninsula bubbling with rivers of red hot lava and magma from her mile high vantage point.
On X, the excited traveller said: ‘My life has peaked. Nothing is ever topping this. Volcano erupted last night in Iceland.’
According to the The Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) the volcanic activity started on the Sundhnukagigar fissure outside the village of Grindavik at 11.14pm on Wednesday evening.
Kayleigh told MailOnline how her flight the morning after proved quite the start to her winter holiday, saying the atmosphere on board was ‘incredible’ as people realised what they were seeing.
The holidaymaker, who’s still in Iceland, says there were mixed reactions on board, with some people a little nervous at Mother Nature’s fiery display: ‘I wasn’t worried but I think a few people on the plane were. I am a very laid back person and I think if it was truly dangerous, we would’ve been rerouted.’
‘The pilot did announce it long before we could all see it but the atmosphere was incredible! Everyone was gasping and filming it and just in awe.
‘I felt really sorry for everyone on the right side of the plane so I held my phone in front of the window so they could all see it too.’
Kayleigh took the footage as the plane started its descent into Keflavik International Airport on Thursday morning, after leaving Luton Airport around 9am.
She says you can still see the volcano from terra firma too: ‘You can see the eruption from most of the island at night due to it being so bright.’
The volcano lies 20 miles south-west of Reykjavik, where the most recent eruption ended on September 6th.
The latest volcanic release began following a ‘small earthquake‘ at 10:30pm on Wednesday.
This will be the tenth eruption in three years, the country’s meteorological office said.
The nearby fishing town of Grindavik, home to nearly 4,000 residents before an evacuation order in December last year, remains largely deserted due to the threat from lava flows.
The remaining 50 to 60 residents, the Svartsengi Power Station and the tourist attraction the Blue Lagoon, a spa facility with hotels and large natural pools, have been evacuated.
It looks like the gas pollution will go to the south and out to sea, so there won’t be any ill-effects on locals.
Dramatic video and photographs showed a wall of magma lighting up the sky in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Spectacular images broadcast live from the volcano showed red-orange lava gushing from a long fissure surrounded by thick smoke.
Volcanoes on the peninsula had not erupted for 800 years until March 2021 when a period of heightened seismic activity began.
Since then volcanologists have warned that volcanic activity in the region had entered a new era.
The latest eruption is smaller than the last one, at the end of August, the IMO said in a statement.
‘The outpourings are lower and the lava is not flowing as fast,’ added Ofeigsson.
Most of Grindavik’s 4,000 residents were evacuated a year ago, shortly before the first volcanic eruption in the area.
Since then, almost all the houses have been sold to the state, and the residents departed.
‘About fifty houses were occupied in recent nights,’ said the civil protection department.
In January, during another eruption, three houses in the village were engulfed by flames.
The Blue Lagoon has announced it will be closed until at least Sunday.
A statement on their website reads: ‘Due to a volcanic eruption that commenced in Sundhnúksgígar on November 20, we took the precautionary measure of evacuating and temporarily closing all our operational units.
Benedikt Ófeigsson from the Norwegian Meteorological Agency told local media Channel 2: ‘There is currently nothing in danger, and if this does not develop much differently than it has been doing, the infrastructure should escape this quite well.’
Icelandic authorities have erected barriers to divert the streams of molten rock away from the town of Grindavik, the power station and the Blue Lagoon.
Scientists have warned that Reykjanes is likely to experience repeated volcanic outbreaks for decades, possibly even centuries.
But the eruptions are not expected to cause the level of disruption seen when the Eyjafjallajokull volcano burst in 2010, spreading ash clouds across Europe and grounding some 100,000 flights globally.
