Indonesia reopened five airports past midnight on Tuesday after Anak Krakatau’s weekend eruption forced a two-day shutdown that jammed one of the country’s busiest travel corridors. Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International airport, the first to ground flights on Sunday morning, did not resume operations until 00:30 on Tuesday.
The reopening brought immediate relief, but not closure. Nearly 3,000 flights were disrupted and more than 340,000 passengers were left stranded as ash from the Indonesian volcano spread across Jakarta, Lampung province and parts of Java's westernmost province Banten, showing how quickly a single eruption can spill into a regional travel crisis.
For Finna, that meant two intercity trains overnight and an arrival in Jakarta at 03:00 on Monday, only to find the airport still caught in the fallout. “It was very crowded because passengers from the morning flights had piled up, while those scheduled for later departures still didn't know what would happen,” she said, adding that everyone was watching the flight information screens for signs of movement.
Anak Krakatau began erupting late on Friday and kept seismically active throughout the weekend. The ash column reached 6,000m on the Java side and 15,000m on the Sumatra side, high enough to force airport closures but also variable enough to explain why the disruption unfolded in stages, with some operations halted before others and some services restored only after a long wait.
That uncertainty did not lift when flights started again. Indonesia's Geological Agency warned on Monday that the probability of further eruptions in the coming periods remains high, a reminder that the reopening came with a risk that the shutdown could be repeated if the volcano flares again.
The pressure was felt far beyond the terminals. Shaw's team had axed their plans to camp out at Java's Ujung Kulon National Park after authorities raised its alert level for the Anak Krakatau volcano, while a newly wed Malaysian couple said they were told their next flight back to Kuala Lumpur would not be until 11 September. Anak Krakatau sits in the Sunda Strait, midway between Java and Sumatra, and when it moves, the whole route around it feels the shake.
For now, the main question is not whether the airports have reopened — they have — but whether the warning signs are loud enough to keep travelers from being caught twice. The island’s air network is moving again, but it is doing so under a volcano that has not finished speaking.
