Indonesia’s primary airport and several regional air travel hubs resumed operations early Tuesday following closures caused by ash from a volcanic eruption. The Transport Ministry confirmed the reopening, allowing flights to resume after days of disruption due to volcanic activity.
Eight airports halted operations over the weekend after ash was detected in their airspace, disrupting nearly 3,000 flights and leaving more than 340,000 passengers stranded, the Transport Ministry reported on Monday.
Another small airport in south Sumatra resumed operations on Monday morning. The ministry wrote on Instagram that the airport serving the capital Jakarta and four others near the city or around the island of Java are now operating again, as the air safety crisis that left hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded subsides. Early Tuesday the ministry posted on Instagram that Jakarta’s airport and four others are up and running again. Jakarta’s main airport wrote on Instagram that “following the current volcanic eruption activity of Mount Anak Krakatau, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport has resumed flight operations. Airlines now face the daunting task of getting all the stranded passengers onto planes and to their intended destinations after days of chaos at the airports. So two of the original eight are still closed. The Transport Ministry had prepared six alternative airports as options for aircraft that were originally scheduled to land in Jakarta.
More than 240 domestic and international flights were cancelled or delayed due to volcanic ash on Monday morning alone, Soekarno-Hatta airport said, adding that nearly 30,000 passengers were affected. Anak Krakatau, which means Child of Krakatau, sits in a strait that separates the islands of Java and Sumatra. Mount Anak Krakatau, about 150 kilometres (93 miles) from Jakarta, erupted on Saturday, spewing a fountain of lava and a plume of volcanic ash. Eight airports halted operations over the weekend after ash was detected in their airspace, disrupting nearly 3,000 flights and leaving more than 340,000 passengers stranded, the Transport Ministry reported on Monday. The volcano has been sporadically active since it emerged from the sea at the beginning of last century in the caldera that formed after the 1883 eruption of Mount Krakatau. A 2018 tsunami triggered by a collapse of parts of Anak Krakatau killed 429 people and displaced thousands. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
The other four listed as reopening include Halim Perdanakusuma, a smaller Jakarta-area airport that caters to both civil and military flights, and Hussein Sastranegara in Bandung, the capital of West Java, the Transport Ministry said.
Earlier, the airport closures had been repeatedly extended.
