A volcanic eruption in Indonesia on Sunday prompted the immediate closure of all flights at the capital’s primary airport as dense ash clouds drifted across the western regions of the archipelago. While no casualties have been reported and no evacuation orders were issued, authorities caution residents to remain at least two miles away from the crater of the Anak Krakatau volcano.
Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation confirmed that volcanic ash spread into Jakarta and Lampung province on Sumatra’s southern tip. In response, AirNav Indonesia shut down airspace around Soekarno-Hatta and Halim Perdanakusuma airports in Jakarta, along with four other facilities, including Radin Inten II Airport in Lampung.
By Sunday evening, the nationwide shutdown had impacted 170,000 travelers across 1,558 canceled flights. Of these, 963 cancellations were concentrated at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport. Officials ordered all eight airports to remain closed until 8:59 a.m. Monday.
Diego Urdiales, a Spanish tourist awaiting a return flight to Madrid, expressed frustration at the lack of communication. “I was supposed to get input from the airline… but so far no news,” he said. Fellow passenger Michele Gouw adopted a more resigned attitude, stating, “It’s a natural disaster, it’s a force majeure, so, what can we do? We just have to accept it and wait for the airline and airport directions.”
Lukman F. Laisa, director general of civil aviation at the Ministry of Transportation, emphasized that safety remains the priority. He warned that flight schedules could suffer cascading disruptions affecting aircraft rotations and terminal capacity as airlines attempt to restore normal operations.
Satellite imagery analyzed by Indonesia’s volcanology agency and the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre identified two distinct ash plumes. One rose to 20,000 feet and drifted northeast over Jakarta, Banten, and West Java. A second, more powerful cloud reached 50,000 feet and spread over Banten, Lampung, and Bengkulu provinces, as well as the southern Sunda Strait and parts of the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra.
Lana Saria, head of Indonesia’s Geological Agency, noted that activity at Anak Krakatau has intensified since July, with Sunday’s event being the strongest in that period. She indicated that repeated eruptions suggest a ongoing supply of magma and gases beneath the volcano, though predicting a larger event remains uncertain.
The disruption extended beyond aviation. On Sunday, the government authorized schools in affected areas to temporarily switch to online learning to reduce student exposure to ashfall and allow local authorities to adjust based on ground conditions.
Anak Krakatau, meaning “child of Krakatau,” sits in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. Its predecessor, Krakatau, is famous for its catastrophic 1883 eruption that caused global cooling. A previous eruption of Anak Krakatau in 2018 triggered a landslide and tsunami that killed at least 430 people in Sumatra and Java, reducing the island to roughly a quarter of its original size.
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