Indonesia closed eight airports, including its busiest, after the Anak Krakatau volcano erupted early Sunday and sent ash drifting across Jakarta and the western end of the country.
The volcanic island in the Sunda Strait, between Java and Sumatra, had been showing signs of activity since Friday before it erupted for 30 seconds at 3:53 a.m. and again for 16 seconds about three hours later, Indonesia's Geological Agency said. Closed-circuit cameras recorded lava flaring from the crater.
Soekarno-Hatta International Airport suspended operations at 1:30 a.m. after a paper test conducted between 12:35 and 1:05 a.m. came back positive for ash in the airport area, Director General of Civil Aviation Lukman F. Laisa said in a statement from Jakarta. What began as a short closure was extended repeatedly through the day.
By Sunday evening the shutdown had affected 467 flight movements at Soekarno-Hatta alone and roughly 150,000 passengers, according to The Associated Press, with the airport ordered to stay closed until nearly midnight. Halim Perdanakusuma in Jakarta, Radin Inten II in Lampung, Budiarto in Curug and Pondok Cabe Airfield were shut as well. Bandung's Husein Sastranegara later returned a positive ash test.
Transportation Minister Dudy Purwagandhi said the closures were extended to midnight after the ash plume, which had been blowing west for most of the day, turned east, the Jakarta Globe reported. Conditions are being reassessed every four hours.
"Safety remains our top priority in every operational decision," Lukman said, warning that aircraft rotations, fleet availability and terminal capacity would take days to untangle.
No casualties were reported and no evacuation order was issued. The nearest settlement is more than 10 miles from the volcano, though authorities told residents and visitors to stay at least 2 miles from the active crater. Ash settled across parts of Jakarta and Lampung province on Sumatra's southern tip, the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation said.
International carriers scrambled. Singapore Airlines canceled its Singapore to Jakarta flights for the day, and airlines across the region issued flexible rebooking policies. Terminals 1B, 2 and 3 at Soekarno-Hatta, crowded for much of the morning, had thinned out by evening as passengers gave up and left.
Anak Krakatau, whose name means child of Krakatau, grew out of the caldera left by the catastrophic 1883 eruption. Its current eruptive phase has been building since July. Figures in this report reflect the situation as of Sunday evening local time.