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Indonesia’s main airport in Jakarta and four other airports have resumed operations after several days of closures caused by volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Anak Krakatau, the Transport Ministry said on Tuesday.
The ministry wrote on Instagram that the airport serving the capital Jakarta and four others near the city or around the island of Java are now operating again, as the air safety crisis that left hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded subsides.
Mount Anak Krakatau, located about 150 kilometres from Jakarta, erupted on Saturday, sending lava into the air and producing a plume of volcanic ash.
Eight airports were shut over the weekend after ash was detected in their airspace, disrupting almost 3,000 flights and leaving more than 340,000 passengers stranded, according to figures released by the Transport Ministry on Monday.
Soekarno-Hatta International Airport confirmed its reopening on Instagram, saying flight operations had resumed following the volcanic activity at Mount Anak Krakatau.
The closures had been extended several times as authorities continued to assess the impact of the ash on air travel.
The reopening leaves airlines facing the task of transporting thousands of passengers who have been stranded at airports for several days to their destinations.
The other airports reopening include Halim Perdanakusuma, a smaller airport serving the Jakarta area that handles both civilian and military flights, and Hussein Sastranegara Airport in Bandung, the capital of West Java.
An airport in southern Sumatra, which was among the eight affected by the eruption, had already resumed operations on Monday morning, leaving two of the original eight airports still closed.
Soekarno-Hatta said nearly 30,000 passengers were affected by more than 240 domestic and international flights that were cancelled or delayed because of volcanic ash on Monday morning alone.
The Transport Ministry had also designated six alternative airports for aircraft that had originally been scheduled to land in Jakarta.
Anak Krakatau, meaning “Child of Krakatau”, is located in the strait separating Java and Sumatra.
The volcano has remained intermittently active since emerging from the sea at the beginning of the 20th century within the caldera created by the 1883 eruption of Mount Krakatau.
In 2018, a tsunami caused by the collapse of part of Anak Krakatau killed 429 people and displaced thousands of others.
