Indonesia Cancels Bali Flights After Mount Agung Volcano Erupts

(Bloomberg) -- Indonesia canceled flights to and from the nation’s main resort island of Bali after the Mt. Agung volcano erupted late on Friday.

“Currently flights to and from I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport have been canceled.” Polana Pramesti, director general of civil aviation, said on the ministry’s Twitter page. “We will continue to update the latest condition on the eruption of Mount Agung.”

The cancellations include four flights to Bali on Saturday and five that were scheduled to leave the island.

Mount Agung erupted on Friday, its latest in a series of blasts in recent months, throwing volcanic ash into the southern part of the island, where the airport is located, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia’s Disaster Mitigation Agency, said in text message. The volcano spewed lava as far as three kilometers.

Indonesia’s 17,000 islands are prone to earthquakes as the Southeast Asian nation straddles the Pacific Ring of Fire -- an arc of fault lines and volcanoes that causes frequent seismic upheavals.

--With assistance from Fathiya Dahrul.

To contact the reporter on this story: Harry Suhartono in Jakarta at hsuhartono@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, John McCluskey, Hari Govind

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