Latest news with #IGustiNgurahRaiAirport
The Journal
a day ago
- The Journal
Flights to Bali cancelled after Indonesia volcano eruption sends ash cloud 10km into sky
DOZENS OF FLIGHTS to and from Indonesia's resort island of Bali have been cancelled after a volcano erupted, shooting an ash tower 10 kilometres into the sky. Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,584-metre volcano on the tourist island of Flores, erupted yesterday, with authorities raising its alert status to the highest level of a four-tiered system. 'Due to volcano activity of Lewatobi Laki-Laki in East Nusa Tenggara, several flights at I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport are cancelled,' airport operator Angkasa Pura Indonesia told the AFP news agency in a statement. The flights cancelled included Jetstar and Virgin Australia services to cities across Australia, with Air India, Air New Zealand, Singapore's Tigerair and China's Juneyao Airlines also cancelling flights due to the volcano eruption. Jetstar confirmed cancellations to and from Bali in a statement on its website this morning: 'Forecasts show the ash cloud is expected to clear by later tonight. As a result, this afternoon's flights will be delayed to operate later this evening.' Several domestic flights leaving for popular hotspot Labuan Bajo on Flores were also cancelled. Bali's Ngurah Rai airport said 32 flights in and out of the island had been cancelled on domestic and international routes. Advertisement Smoke from the Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki during an eruption seen from Lembata. Alamy Alamy The aviation hub is still operating normally, despite the cancelled flights, as cancellations depend on the route and the airline. Smaller airports on the island have been closed until tomorrow. Volcanic ash has fallen on several villages around Lewotobi Laki-Laki and forced the evacuation of at least one village last night. The emergency services on the island said tremors and eruptions are still being detected this morning. Around 450 families from villages impacted by the eruption have been moved to temporary housing. Residents and tourists should avoid carrying out any activities within at least seven kilometres of the volcano's crater, the Indonesian geology agency said. It warned of the possibility of hazardous lahar floods – a type of mud or debris flow of volcanic materials – if heavy rain occurs, particularly for communities near rivers. There are no immediate reports of damages or casualties. - © AFP 2025
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First Post
a day ago
- First Post
Bali-bound Air India flight returns to Delhi as volcanic eruption disrupts air travel
Dozens of flights to and from Indonesia's Bali were cancelled on Wednesday after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,584-metre volcano on the island of Flores, erupted read more A villager watches the eruption of Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki as seen from Talibura village in Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara, on June 17, 2025. Source: AFP A Bali-bound Air India flight, which earlier took off from Delhi, had to take a U-turn and return on Wednesday (June 18) after reports of a volcanic eruption near the destination airport in Indonesia. 'The Air India flight AI2145 on 18 June 2025 from Delhi to Bali was advised to air return to Delhi due to reports of volcanic eruption near destination airport Bali, in the interest of safety,' an Air India official said. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The plane had earlier landed in Delhi, and all passengers had disembarked the aircraft safely. 'Inconvenience caused to passengers is sincerely regretted and every effort has been made to minimise it by providing hotel accommodation to the affected passengers. Full refunds on cancellation or complimentary rescheduling has also been offered to them if opted,' the official added. Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki erupts Dozens of flights to and from Indonesia's Bali were cancelled on Wednesday after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,584-metre volcano on the island of Flores, erupted a day earlier. The eruption shot ash up to 10 kilometres in the sky, leading to very poor visibility and air quality. 'Due to volcano activity of Lewatobi Laki-Laki in East Nusa Tenggara, several flights at I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport are cancelled,' airport operator Angkasa Pura Indonesia told news agency AFP in a statement. The statement added that the ash cloud was expected to clear by Wednesday night. 'Forecasts show the ash cloud is expected to clear by later tonight. As a result, this afternoon's flights will be delayed to operate later this evening,' it said. Tremors still being felt Volcanic ash from Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki fell on several villages, prompting the evacuation of at least one village late Tuesday, according to the country's disaster mitigation agency. Tremors continued, signalling ongoing volcanic activity. The geology agency earlier advised residents and tourists to avoid activities within seven kilometres of the crater and warned of potential hazardous lahar floods—mud or debris flows from volcanic materials—if heavy rain occurs, especially near rivers. No immediate damages or casualties were reported.
France 24
a day ago
- France 24
Dozens of Bali flights cancelled after Indonesia volcano erupts
Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki, a 1,584-metre (5,197-foot) volcano on the tourist island of Flores, erupted on Tuesday, with authorities raising its alert status to the highest level of a four-tiered system. "Due to volcano activity of Lewatobi Laki-Laki in East Nusa Tenggara, several flights at I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport are cancelled," airport operator Angkasa Pura Indonesia told AFP in a statement. The flights cancelled included Jetstar and Virgin Australia services to cities across Australia, with Air India, Air New Zealand, Singapore's Tigerair and China's Juneyao Airlines also cancelling flights "due to volcano", Bali's international airport website said. Jetstar confirmed cancellations to and from Bali in a statement on its website Wednesday. "Forecasts show the ash cloud is expected to clear by later tonight. As a result, this afternoon's flights will be delayed to operate later this evening," it said. Several domestic AirAsia flights leaving for popular tourist hotspot Labuan Bajo on Flores were also cancelled. Bali's Ngurah Rai airport said 32 flights in and out of the island had been cancelled on domestic and international routes. An airport customer service agent told AFP the aviation hub was still operating normally despite the cancelled flights. "It depends on the route and also the airline," the agent, who declined to give her name, said. The Fransiskus Xaverius Seda Airport, a relatively smaller airport in nearby Maumere on Flores island was closed until Thursday morning, its authorities said on social media. Ongoing tremors Volcanic ash rained down on several villages around Lewotobi Laki-Laki and forced the evacuation of at least one village late Tuesday, the country's disaster mitigation agency said. Agency spokesman Abdul Muhari said in a statement that tremors and eruptions were still being detected on Wednesday morning. "No less than 450 families from affected villages... have settled in temporary housing equipped with electricity and clean water facilities," he said. The geology agency said residents and tourists should avoid carrying out any activities within at least seven kilometres of the volcano's crater. It warned of the possibility of hazardous lahar floods –- a type of mud or debris flow of volcanic materials –- if heavy rain occurs, particularly for communities near rivers. There were no immediate reports of damages or casualties. In November, the volcano erupted multiple times, killing nine people, cancelling scores of international flights to Bali, and forcing thousands to evacuate. Laki-Laki, which means "man" in Indonesian, is twinned with a calmer volcano peak named after the Indonesian word for "woman". Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific "Ring of Fire." © 2025 AFP
Euronews
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Plane awkward: How Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron joined the club
French President Emmanuel Macron's recent awkwardness with his wife Brigitte, caught on film as the couple prepared to disembark on arrival for an official tour of Vietnam, is no entirely new phenomenon. Embarkation as well as disembarkation have both seen world leaders embroiled in moments that have been captured on film for posterity, sparking irony and satire, and capturing their embarrassment for posterity. Here are some of the most noted examples: US President Gerald Ford slipped and fell in June 1975 while descending the steps of Air Force One in Salzburg, Austria. The incident was captured on camera and suddenly became the subject of satire. Ford blamed the slip on an old knee injury, but this episode gave him the reputation of a bumbler, which was used by top comedian Chevy Chase forhis sketches. The incident became an issue for Ford's re-election campaign the following year, contributing to a perception of clumsiness during his presidency. Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter. Another US President to find the stairs tricky was Joe Biden, who experienced multiple stumbles while boarding Air Force One. In March 2021, he tripped three times ascending the stairs at Joint Base Andrews, which the White House attributed to windy conditions. Biden appeared to take a moment to dust off his knee before making his way onto the aircraft. A similar incident occurred in 2023, sparking doubts about his physical condition. Despite avoiding major incidents, Donald Trump has sometimes struggled in climbing and descending stairs as well. In October 2018, he was seen discarding an umbrella at the top of the Air Force One stairs, letting it roll away as he boarded the plane. On another occasion, he was spotted with a piece of toilet paper stuck to the sole of his shoe, as he boarded an Air Force One plane heading to Minnesota. In June 2020, he was observed cautiously descending a ramp at West Point, sparking discussions about his health. He later explained that the ramp was "very long and steep" and lacked a handrail . In November 2022, the then Indonesian First Lady Iriana stumbled while descending the stairs of the presidential aircraft, on her husband Joko Widodo's arm. The presidential couple landed at the I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport in Bali, to join the G20 summit. Iriana was immediately assisted by the presidential security team and, unharmed, was able to go on with her scheduled engagements. Sometimes just finding the stairs can prove too much of a challenge. This was the case of Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who landed in Ireland in 1994 for an official visit but did not emerge from his aeroplane. Then Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and his ministers were left bemused on the red carpet at Shannon Airport, waiting in vain for the Russian premier. Various excuses were offered for his absence: he was "indisposed", resting after a tiring flight, his bodyguards too frightened to wake him. Most opinion coalesced around the suggestion that he was simply too drunk to make it to the stairs, however. Yeltsin wrote to Reynolds apologising for the "unfortunate mishap" that prevented their meeting and extending an invitation to Reynolds to visit Russia the following year. Belgian Customs will start using military radar systems to monitor private aircraft more closely in a bid to combat smuggling, officials have said. The move comes as authorities acknowledge that smugglers are taking advantage of limited oversight at small airports and heliports across the country. Private planes are often used to transport drugs, weapons, cash and illicit goods with little to no scrutiny. Belgium has around 150 airfields and heliports, many of which allow private aircraft to land and depart without formal customs checks. Officials say this lack of surveillance has made them a magnet for trafficking operations. "There are thousands and thousands of flights in Belgium. Customs concentrated all its efforts and controls on the six most important airports, but the other 150 were really a blind spot for us," said Kristian Vanderwaeren, the General Administrator of Belgian Customs. Private aircraft offer further advantages to criminals, including flexible routes, rapid turnaround times on the ground and the ability to switch off transponders – devices that allow aircraft to be tracked – making them invisible to standard monitoring systems. To improve monitoring, a customs officer will now be seconded to Belgium's national airspace security centre. From there, they will use radar data provided by the Ministry of Defence to identify and flag suspicious flights – even those with disabled transponders. "This will then enable us to send a team, a brigade, to an airport where, until now, we haven't carried out any checks," explained Vanderwaeren. Authorities recorded only about 30 smuggling-related offences involving private aircraft in Belgium last year. But with stepped-up surveillance, officials expect detections to rise.
NZ Herald
14-05-2025
- NZ Herald
What it's like at Escape Haven wellness retreat in Bali
January offered no respite. January was chaperoning six 16-year-olds to the wilds of Whangamatā for New Year's. January brought very tepid feedback about the aforementioned manuscript and the announcement of a combined surprise family wedding/70th birthday with two weeks to organise it. January was doing everything for everyone on very little sleep. But through the fatigue, the angst and the stress, dangled this extraordinary carrot: Escape Haven. The name filled my thoughts and entered my dreams, teasing me with its implied promise of a reprieve from the toils of daily life. At 1.30am, on the last day of January, I arrived at I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport: nerves shot to pieces, hopes sky high. After queuing forever and ever at this counter and that counter, I lugged my stupidly heavy luggage out into the arrivals hall and there, exactly as the retreat's very precise instructions had promised, in the middle of the throngs of porters and taxi drivers shouting and touting for business, was a man in traditional dress bearing a warm smile and a sign with my name on it. I could have cried. And when he guided me to an immaculate air-conditioned van, handing me a cool, fragrant cloth, a glass bottle of water, drops of condensation hanging from it, and a small woven basket, lined with pandan leaves and filled with fresh fruit, homemade crackers and bliss balls, I did cry. They would not be my only tears over the course of the next seven days. There were tears of pain (cupping), of shock (ice bath), of pleasure (overnight peanut butter oats, okay I didn't actually cry but they were seriously delicious). And I was not alone. I witnessed grown women weep during yoga classes, opening ceremonies, blessing ceremonies and cacao ceremonies. I was the only one there on the menopause package, others were there for surfing, Pilates and ayurveda. But while we ranged in age from our mid-20s to mid-60s, and hailed from all around the world, there was a unifying sense that for whatever reason, however big or small the trauma that had brought us there, ultimately, we all sought the same thing: respite, a reset. One of the few upsides to menopause has been a newfound ability to let go. Let go of a lifetime of worrying about what others think, of holding myself back. So, while normally neither much of a team player or particularly woo-woo, I embraced the group dynamic and leaned into the new age stuff (Self-Love Yin Yoga, anyone? Yes, please!) and I'm sure my experience was all the richer for it. While my schedule at Escape Haven was fairly full, it's hard to complain when your biggest concern is whether there's enough time to scoff your lunch between the gua-sha facial and the hot stone massage. To be fair, the staff (oh, the staff… in all the world do kinder people exist?) did keep reiterating that I was under no pressure to do anything I didn't want to. However, as much as I could have quite happily just practised a little yoga and enjoyed the odd massage here and there, whiling away the rest of my time reading beside the pool (straight out of Vogue Exteriors) or lying about in my room (straight out of Vogue Interiors), in truth it's pretty hard to write 2000 words about a week spent largely on your arse. Mind you, given the fact I slept through approximately 85% of my treatments, it's pretty hard to write about those, too. I loved the sunrise bike ride to a rice paddy and I loved the pool platter breakfast (you wallow in the shallows while grazing on a floating tray of healthy delights). I loved the optional body work session so much I opted to pay for another and I loved the little handwritten notes and gifts left on my pillow each night ('Whatever you resist persists'). But of everything there was to love about the retreat, I think what my list-delighting, routine-seeking, control-needing, decision-fretting brain appreciated most of all was my personalised schedule. So much thought had gone in to what would be most beneficial, for not just any menopausal woman, but this particular menopausal woman. Prior to my arrival, I was required to fill out a form with all my needs, wants, strengths and weaknesses. And then, once there, I had a consultation to discuss these, to unpack my many issues, and tweak the programme that had been devised for me accordingly. On their recommendation, I did breathwork and strength training and a session in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber, but it was a moving feast, with the staff readily making adjustments. Of course, we can book you into one of those healing/red light/detox treatments your neighbour was raving about at dinner, and, no, it's no trouble at all to make you one of those frozen dragon fruit juices she's having while you wait for confirmation. Our schedules became our bibles, and as one of my fellow retreatees posted on the group chat: without it, she had no idea where she was meant to be or what she was meant to be doing when she got home. Your every need met, anticipated even, apparently lots of women don't bother venturing beyond Escape Haven and I can understand why, however it's also quite hard to write a travel story if you don't actually leave your accommodation. Unlike Eat, Pray, Love, Escape Haven is not located on some peaceful hillside in Ubud, but at the end of an alleyway lined with washing, off a main road along which a million scooters zoom day and night, in the heart of all the glorious chaos that is Canggu. I loved the contrast. Loved knowing that on the other side of the beautiful old wooden doors behind which we were so exquisitely succoured, lay this crazy world of cool cafes alongside crumbling temples, beach bars next to nail bars, surfboards propped up outside spendy boutiques and, everywhere, absolutely everywhere, beautiful young people living their very best life. Despite my best intentions, I did what I always do when I travel, which is to say I shopped up a storm. While how the locals dress may initially seem foreign, weird even, within a day or two, typically I find it will start to feel not only normal, but desirable, necessary. Example: once on a trip to Finland I became convinced that the key thing missing from my wardrobe in Auckland – humid and sticky Auckland – was a large fur hat. In Canggu, I fool myself that like our gorgeous yoga teachers I, too, waft about in tiny knitted tops and floaty pants, that whenever I feel a chill, I reach not for a woolly cardigan but a fringed shawl. That I, too, zip around on scooters in little stretchy shorts, the centre seam ruched so as to accentuate my firm, round buttocks. I've been back home a month now, and I've yet to wear anything I bought, not a single pair of flowing pants, nor little stretchy shorts. But there are several lessons I have taken with me from my whirlwind of rest and restoration. That while I am really bad at relaxing, I really do love yoga. That ceremonial grade cacao is delicious, especially when served with a little honey and chilli, and that while bliss balls are all well and good, sometimes you just want a Moro Gold. On my second day at Escape Haven, I was taken to get an Inbody Scan. Basically, you stand on a machine and it analyses your composition. The scan itself was painless enough, but while I had rather smugly anticipated the results would be, if not glowing, then at least middling, it turns out that, despite regularly working out for my entire adult life, my muscle mass is below normal. How can this be, I bleated to the Escape Haven staff. Protein, they said. You lack protein. So, having been shown the error of my nutritionally lazy vegetarian ways, my pantry is now awash with protein powder, my fridge with soy byproducts, and every time I get the blender out to make myself a protein shake, every time I find inspiration for dinner in the zillion different ways the retreat's exceptionally skilled chefs served up tofu, I give thanks, recalling one of those little notes on my pillow: 'Always have an attitude of gratitude'.
