Bali volcano: Some flights resume amid continued eruption

Eruptions continued on Thursday from Indonesia’s Mount Agung volcano, located on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali, but some normal operations returned even as it hurled ash 2,000 metres into the atmosphere, the country’s disaster agency said.

“Eruptions followed by plumes of thick ash are continuing,” said Sutopo Nugroho, spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency.

Some flights resumed from and to Bali’s international airport after it was reopened on Wednesday, with nearly 2,000 passengers on 20 flights leaving and arriving on the island, an airport spokesman said.

But many travelers were still stranded, and the airport was still operating at far below its normal capacity of about 400 flights a day.

Authorities on Monday raised the warning alert to the highest level and ordered the evacuation of nearly 100,000 people after the volcano began belching ash over the weekend.

The Bali airport was closed for two and a half days owing to fears that ash from Agung could threaten flight safety.

A spokesman for the airport, Arie Ahsanurrohim, said airlines from countries such as China and Australia were seeking to operate extra flights to carry stranded passengers.

“Air traffic is slowly returning to normal,” Ahsanurrohim said.

Jetstar Airways said on Twitter that it and another Australian carrier, Qantas, planned to operate 10 scheduled and six relief flights on Thursday.

The international airport on the neighbouring resort island of Lombok was closed until midnight on Thursday after ash returned there, said the country’s airport operator, Angkasa Pura, in a statement.

The Lombok airport was also closed on Sunday, but reopened after the ash moved to the vicinity of the Bali airport.

The 3,031-metre Mount Agung last erupted for a period of almost a year in 1963 and 1964, leaving about 1,200 people dead.

Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, an area known for seismic upheavals and volcanic eruptions.

The alert for the volcano was last raised to the highest level more than two months ago, prompting some 130,000 people to flee their homes and seek refuge in temporary shelters.

Authorities lowered the alert a notch last month after a steady decrease in activity.