Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia flights between Australia and Bali have resumed after they were earlier grounded due to safety concerns over a dangerous ash cloud sparked by volcanic explosions east of the holiday island.
Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki on the remote island of Flores, in the East Nusa Tenggara province, has erupted several times in recent days, beginning with a major eruption just over a week ago that killed nine people and spewed ash kilometres into the air.
At least nine flights are scheduled to fly between the two countries on Thursday.
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This includes six return flights by Jetstar and three flights by Qantas.
Four of Jetstar’s flights were existing scheduled services, and two recovery flights have been added.
Two of Qantas’ flights are flights delayed from Wednesday.
“Our teams have been working through the night to closely monitor the evolving situation and assess when it’s safe to fly,” a spokesperson for Qantas Group said in a statement.
“Conditions this morning have improved, allowing us to resume operations from today between Australia and Denpasar on both Jetstar and Qantas.
“We will continue to monitor the changing conditions and volcanic activity and work on plans to operate more recovery flights using aircraft from across the group so that we can get customers on their way as quickly as possible.
“We are contacting customers directly to notify them of any changes to their travel plans.
“We appreciate the changing situation is frustrating and we thank customers for their understanding and patience
“This is an evolving situation, and we recommend customers to check their flight status at Jetstar.com and Qantas.com before coming to the airport.”
Virgin Australia also confirmed it had resumed flights between Australia and Bali.
“Safety is always our highest priority, and our meteorology team has continued to closely monitor the situation,” the airline said in a statement on its website.
“We will now resume all scheduled flights in and out of Denpasar.
“We will continue to contact guests whose flights have been cancelled to accommodate them on recovery flights in the coming days.
“We sincerely regret any disruption these cancellations have caused and assure our guests that our team is working diligently to rebook all impacted guests to their destinations as safely and promptly as possible.”
Smartraveller’s advice for customers impacted by cancellations is to contact the airline or insurer for alternative arrangements.