Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky.
Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier.
Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled.
Photo: AFP
“Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations.
Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in recent weeks have killed nine people, with 31 injured and more than 11,000 evacuated, Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency said on Tuesday.
Eruptions can pose serious risks to flights, disgorging fine ash that can damage jet engines and scour a plane’s windscreen to the point of invisibility.
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific also listed its flights as canceled, rescheduling routes to and from Bali until today.
“Virgin Australia has made some changes to its current flight schedule, due to the impacts of the volcano in Indonesia,” the airline said, listing scrapped flights to Sydney and Melbourne.
Jetstar said all flights to and from Bali would be halted until noon today.
Qantas said “a number of flights to and from Denpasar Airport in Bali have been disrupted” due to volcanic ash from Lewotobi.
Malaysia Airlines said it had canceled six flights yesterday in a statement on its Web site.
The airlines said they would monitor the volcano’s status and provide updates.
Singapore Airlines was still listing its flights as running on yesterday.
Ahmad Syaugi Shahab, general manager of Bali’s international airport, said 12 domestic and 22 international flights had been affected on Tuesday.
He did not provide details about affected flights on yesterday’s schedule.
“Due to this natural event impacting flight operations, airlines are offering affected passengers the options of refunds, rescheduling, or re-routing,” he added in a statement.
Bali’s international airport operator PT Angkasa Pura Indonesia said it had conducted tests in its airspace and no volcanic ash was detected, saying the airport was “operating as normal.”
Lewotobi erupted again from midnight yesterday until early morning, and a large ash column could be seen pouring from its crater.
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