TANGERANG, Indonesia, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Indonesia reopened its main airport in Jakarta and four others that had been closed due to volcanic ash from Mount Anak Krakatau, although fresh eruptions on Tuesday raised the risk of further disruption.
Ash from Anak Krakatau, which sits halfway between Java and Sumatra islands, has blanketed Jakarta and some surrounding areas since its initial eruption late on Friday. It led to the closure of eight airports for safety reasons, with more than 340,000 travellers impacted.
Soekarno-Hatta Airport, Jakarta’s main airport, resumed operations on Tuesday after wind blew the ash away, Transport Minister Dudy Purwagandhi said in a statement, adding that authorities would check the airworthiness of 178 planes that were grounded there during the closure.
“Perhaps it’ll take some little extra time to prepare the planes,” Dudy said.
Traveller Alvin Pratama Putra, 31, who had arrived at Soekarno-Hatta on Sunday for a flight to South Korea for work, said his flight had now been rescheduled to Thursday.
“What can you do? It’s nature. It’s dangerous for the plane if you force it,” he said, adding that he had been sleeping on a bench at the airport.
Four other airports, including a smaller one in Jakarta and another in the neighbouring city of Bandung, also reopened on Tuesday. Another airport had already reopened on Monday, while two remain closed.
FRESH ERUPTIONS ON TUESDAY
Around 341,000 people have been affected by the delay, diversion, or cancellation of 2,961 flights across the shuttered airports, Chief Infrastructure Minister Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono said on Monday.
Anak Krakatau erupted again three times on Tuesday morning, the volcano monitoring agency said. While smaller than the earlier eruptions, there was still potential for flight disruption depending on ash height and wind direction.
“So far, the impact is not as big as the previous eruptions, but we’ll continue to monitor,” Lana Saria, head of the geological agency, told Reuters in a text message.
The volcano is one of about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia, which straddles the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a highly seismically active zone where different plates on the Earth’s crust meet to create a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Anak Krakatau, which means child of Krakatau, began emerging a century ago from the area previously occupied by Krakatau, then known as Krakatoa. The older volcano destroyed itself in mass eruptions in 1883, which killed more than 36,000 people after triggering a series of tsunamis.
(Reporting by Stanley Widianto, Yuddy Cahya Budiman, and Stefanno Sulaiman; Editing by Christopher Cushing and John Mair)
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