Brisbane woman Teresa was excited about her girls’ trip to Bali in 2017. Her group even extended their trip to enjoy the Indonesian holiday island a little longer. But when the time came to fly home, Bali’s Mount Agung threw their plans into chaos. The volcano erupted in November of that year, causing some 150,000 residents to evacuate from their homes nearby.
Bali’s busy Denpasar airport was also closed due to ash fall from the mountain. “The whole thing was a debacle,” said Teresa, who is again in Bali for a holiday. She told the ABC she was “experiencing deja vu”. Bali airport has reopened following this week’s eruption of Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on the nearby island of Flores, but holiday-makers are warned that disruptions may continue.
But Teresa, who only wants to be identified by her first name, said this time she didn’t make the same mistake as in 2017 — not taking out travel insurance. During the previous trip, only one of Teresa’s friends had travel insurance. “She was able to get a Singapore Airlines flight out quickly, about three days after the eruption,” she said. “One friend was flown to Sydney [as a transit point] where the airport was closed at the time and there was no accommodation available.
It was a similar story for another one of her friends, who was flying home to Perth but had to stay overnight in Darwin. “The airport there was closed at night. She sat on her suitcase until the next morning,” she said. For Teresa, it took just over a week to leave Bali — and even then it wasn’t a direct trip home. “I had to fly to Melbourne first, then I got put into a run-down motel the airline had booked for the passengers,” she said.
Thousands of travellers affected
Indonesia’s transport ministry said some 14,000 travellers had been affected by the eruption of Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki. They said despite the airport returning to normal operations, a backlog of passengers was expected to take some time to clear.
A number of flights between capital cities and Bali scheduled for Wednesday morning were cancelled after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki erupted on Tuesday evening. Others slated for Wednesday evening were delayed for hours.
Indonesian authorities raised the volcanic alert to the highest level and two villages were evacuated. Denpasar airport operators said in a statement on Wednesday that 87 flights were affected by the eruption — 66 international and 21 domestic.
The international flights affected included legs to and from Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Melbourne, the Gold Coast, Perth, Sydney, Singapore, Auckland, Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City.
Source: abc.net.au
