Airlines around Asia ground Bali flights after volcano erupts

JAKARTA: Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, and Singapore cancelled flights to and from the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Wednesday after a nearby volcano spewed an ash tower miles into the sky.

Australia's Jetstar, Qantas, and Virgin Australia grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island erupted, sending a nine-kilometre (5.6-mile) ash column into the sky a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India's IndiGo, and Singapore's Scoot also listed flights as cancelled on Wednesday, according to AFP journalist at Bali's international airport.

"Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds," said AirAsia as it announced several cancellations.

Multiple eruptions from the 1,703-metre (5,587-foot) twin-peaked volcano in recent weeks have killed nine people, injured 31, and led to the evacuation of more than 11,000, Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency said on Tuesday.

Eruptions can pose serious risks to flights, as fine ash can damage jet engines and obscure a plane's windscreen. Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific also listed its flights as cancelled, rescheduling routes to and from Bali until Thursday.

"Virgin Australia has made some changes to its current flight schedule, due to the impacts of the volcano in Indonesia," the airline said, listing cancelled flights to Sydney and Melbourne. Jetstar said all flights to and from Bali would be halted until noon on Thursday.

"Due to volcanic ash caused by the Mount Lewotobi eruption in Indonesia, it is currently not safe to operate flights to and from Bali," the company said in an advisory. Qantas stated that "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 cancelled six flights on Wednesday in a statement on its website.

The airlines said they would monitor the volcano's status and provide updates. Singapore's Scoot and Malaysia's AirAsia did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. Singapore Airlines was still listing its flights as running on Wednesday.

Ahmad Syaugi Shahab, general manager of Bali's international airport, said 12 domestic and 22 international flights had been affected on Tuesday, without identifying the routes. He did not provide details about affected flights on Wednesday'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 on Wednesday it had conducted tests in its airspace and no volcanic ash was detected, stating the airport was "operating as normal."

Lewotobi erupted again from midnight on Wednesday until early morning, with a large ash column visible from its crater, an AFP journalist nearby reported.

Laki-Laki, which means "man" in Indonesian, is twinned with a calmer volcano named after the Indonesian word for "woman."

The island's economy is heavily reliant on tourism, but Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on Earth, straddling the Pacific Ring of Fire where tectonic plates collide. Lombok, an island neighbouring Bali, was rocked by earthquakes in 2018 that killed more than 500 and sparked a mass exodus of foreigners from the tropical paradise.

By RSS/AFP