Volcanic Ash Plume Cancels Flights To Bali

Tourists wait for flight information at Ngurah Rai airport after it reopened on July 13.

Virgin Australia flight VA59 to Bali and flight VA60 to Perth has been cancelled, as has Jetstar’s flight JQ 106 flight to Bali and the return flight JQ 105 to Perth.

Continued volcanic ash near Bali’s Depensar Airport has delayed Air New Zealand flights to and from Auckland.

“We recognise this departure time may cause a few inconvenience, however, this time has been selected to enable the flight to arrive into Bali in daylight in consideration of the changeable conditions”, the airline said.

Mount Raung emits a column of ash and steam on 12 July 2015.

However, clouds of ash from Mt Ruang in East Java have again forced airlines to ground planes due to the potential hazard to their engines.

It is scheduled to depart Bali at 2.30pm on Thursday.

“The latest advice from our team of meteorologists and the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre is that conditions in the vicinity of Denpasar Airport have deteriorated and are no longer safe for flying”, a Virgin spokesman said.

Virgin Australia has cancelled all 10 of its Wednesday services into and out of the Indonesian resort island.

Jetstar had managed to clear a backlog of passengers stranded at the popular holiday destination as of Friday last week.

Air traffic is regularly disrupted by volcanic eruptions in Indonesia, which sits on a belt of seismic activity running around the basin of the Pacific Ocean and is home to the highest number of active volcanoes in the world at around 130.