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Limited flight services resumed in Bali on Thursday after several airlines cancelled their flights to the popular holiday destination due to a volcanic eruption nearby.
Around 83 international routes, mostly from Australia and Southeast Asia, were cancelled on Wednesday after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on the Indonesian island of Flores, located about 500km east of Bali, spewed a 9km tower of ash.
At least 10 people have died and about 15,000 evacuated since the volcano began erupting last week.
Thousands of passengers were stranded on Wednesday after nearly a dozen airlines grounded all flights scheduled to reach and depart from the Denpasar Airport in Bali.
On Thursday, Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia resumed some of their services from Bali to Australia, noting “improved” conditions.
Jetstar will operate six flights, while the Qantas group will operate one scheduled flight and two delayed flights from yesterday.
“We will continue to contact guests whose flights have been cancelled to accommodate them on recovery flights in the coming days,” a Virgin Australia spokesperson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Jetstar said six flights will depart for Bali on Thursday, including two “ad-hoc flights” to clear the backlog. “We will continue to monitor the changing conditions and volcanic activity and work on plans to operate more recovery flights…,” the airline said in a statement.
The Qantas group said three aircraft will depart for Bali from Australia and passengers impacted by the cancellation on 12 and 13 November will be given rebooking options.
Ahmad Syaugi Shahab, the general manager of Bali’s Ngurah Rai airport, said 26 domestic flights and 64 overseas ones were cancelled on Wednesday alone. That included flights from Singapore, Hong Kong, Qatar, India, and Malaysia, some of which resumed on Thursday.
All flights to and from the island of Lombok in the West Nusa Tenggara province, another popular destination for tourists in Indonesia, were cancelled on Wednesday as well.
Air New Zealand said it cancelled a flight to Denpasar scheduled for Wednesday and a return service to Auckland for Thursday. It said the passengers would be given the option to rebook while it monitors the movement of ash in the coming days.
Two of the Korean Air flights were forced to return on Wednesday because of the volcanic ash.
Bali’s airport on Thursday morning recorded another 32 international flight cancellations while 180 international flights were scheduled, Mr Shahab told AFP. “We hope affected airline passengers can resume their travel on Thursday,” he added.
The volcano erupted again overnight into Thursday morning, spewing thick ash column as lava poured from its crater.
The 1,584m volcano on the remote island of Flores has shot billowing columns of ash dozens of times since last Thursday, said Hadi Wijaya, the head of the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation.
While visiting the devastated areas, officials found craters where rocks fell during eruptions, up to 13m wide and 5m deep, in several places including a destroyed school.
Lewotobi Laki Laki is one of a pair of stratovolcanoes in the East Nusa Tenggara province, known locally as the husband-and-wife mountains. “Laki laki” means man, while its mate is Lewotobi Perempuan, or woman.
Lewotobi Laki Laki is one of the 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia, an archipelago of 280 million people. The country is prone to earthquakes, landslides and volcanic activity because it sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.