Stranded tourists depart Bali

Airlines add extra flights to island after volcanic ash cloud shift

KARANGASEM: Airlines laid on extra flights to Bali to allow some of the thousands of passengers stranded by the eruption of Mount Agung to fly out, as a switch in wind direction sent volcanic ash away from the holiday island’s airport.

Mount Agung was partially shrouded by cloud yesterday with parts of Bali lashed by monsoon rain, but according to officials there were persistent tremors from the crater.

“Mount Agung continues to erupt, ejecting volcanic ash up to 2,000m in height,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, said via Twitter.

Earlier in the week, Mount Agung had ejected showers of rocks up to 4km, he said.

The reopening on Wednesday afternoon of Bali’s airport, which is about 60km away from Mount Agung, followed a downgrade in an aviation warning to one level below the most serious, with the arrival of more favourable winds.

While Bali’s airport was open again after a more than two-day closure, the airport on neighbouring Lombok island was closed yesterday due to ash from Mount Agung, air traffic control provider AirNav said.

Bali airport’s call centre said three flights had left yesterday morning, while nine had arrived.

Its website showed dozens of flights scheduled to fly to Singapore, Seoul, Perth and other cities.

Two Chinese state-owned airlines on Wednesday night sent flights to fetch over 2,700 Chinese tourists from Bali, Xinhua news agency said.

China Southern Airlines sent two planes from Guangzhou and Shenzhen, while China Eastern Airlines flew in four from Beijing and Shanghai, it said.

From January to September, Bali received 4.5 million foreign tourist arrivals, nearly half of the 10.5 million arrivals in Indonesia.

Chinese have overtaken Australians to become the top visitors to Bali, representing around a quarter of arrivals.

Previously, stranded passengers in Bali had been advised to take a long bus ride and then a ferry hop to Java island and onto airports such as Surabaya.

Asked about the economic impact of the eruption, Indonesia’s Tourism Minister Arif Yahya has estimated that since the volcano warning level was first raised in September, the loss in revenue could be more than US$650mil (RM2.7bil).

Mount Agung looms over eastern Bali to a height of just over 3,000m. Its last major eruption in 1963 killed more than 1,000 people and razed several villages.

Authorities are urging people living up to 10km from the volcano to move to emergency centres.