BALI: Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore cancelled flights to and from the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Wednesday, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower miles into the sky.
Australias Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier.
Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, Indias IndiGo and Singapores Scoot also listed flights as cancelled on Wednesday, according to an AFP journalist at Balis international airport.
Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds, AirAsia said as it announced several cancellations.
Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in recent weeks have killed nine people, with 31 injured and more than 11,000 evacuated, Indonesias disaster mitigation agency said Tuesday.
Eruptions can pose serious risks to flights, disgorging fine ash that can damage jet engines and scour a planes windscreen to the point of invisibility.
Hong Kongs Cathay Pacific also listed its flights as cancelled, rescheduling routes to and from Bali until Thursday.
Virgin Australia has made some changes to its current flight schedule, due to the impacts of the volcano in Indonesia, the airline said, listing scrapped flights to Sydney and Melbourne.
Jetstar said all flights to and from Bali would be halted until noon on Thursday.
Due to volcanic ash caused by the Mount Lewotobi eruption in Indonesia, it is currently not safe to operate flights to and from Bali, the company said in an advisory.
Qantas said a number of flights to and from Denpasar Airport in Bali have been disrupted due to volcanic ash from Lewotobi.
Malaysia Airlines said it had cancelled six flights Wednesday in a statement on its website.
The airlines said they would monitor the volcanos status and provide updates.
Singapores Scoot and Malaysias AirAsia did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. Singapore Airlines was still listing its flights as running on Wednesday.
Refunds, rescheduling, re-routing
Ahmad Syaugi Shahab, general manager of Balis international airport, said 12 domestic and 22 international flights had been affected on Tuesday, without identifying the routes.
He did not provide details about affected flights on Wednesdays schedule.
Due to this natural event impacting flight operations, airlines are offering affected passengers the options of refunds, rescheduling, or re-routing, he added in a statement.
Balis international airport operator PT Angkasa Pura Indonesia said Wednesday it had conducted tests in its airspace and no volcanic ash was detected, saying the airport was operating as normal.
Lewotobi erupted again from midnight Wednesday until early morning, and a large ash column could be seen pouring from its crater, an AFP journalist nearby said.
Laki-Laki, which means man in Indonesian, is twinned with a calmer volcano named after the Indonesian word for woman.
The islands economy is heavily reliant on tourism but Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on Earth, straddling the Pacific Ring of Fire where tectonic plates collide.
Lombok, an island neighbouring Bali, was rocked by earthquakes in 2018 that killed more than 500 and sparked a mass exodus of foreigners from the tropical paradise.