In the first days of September, people near the Sunda Strait were sweeping their houses. Grey dust covered the floors. The walls of a mosque near the villages were black. The volcano, Anak Krakatau, was still erupting while they worked. At night, the lava made the sky red.
The volcano began to erupt on Saturday and threw lava into the air. Indonesia’s geology agency said that people in several parts of the country heard loud noises and felt the ground shake.
At half past one on Sunday morning, workers found ash in the air around Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. The airport stopped all flights. The transport ministry said a test showed ash in the airport area, so the airport stayed closed until half past nine in the morning. The ministry said 209 flights and more than 22,000 passengers were affected. Flights to and from Singapore had the biggest problems, and flights to Doha, Sydney and Kuala Lumpur were affected too. At least sixteen flights inside the country to Bali were cancelled.
The airport did not stay open for long. On Monday morning, the transport minister said that seven airports in Indonesia were still closed. Two of them serve Jakarta. Ash had covered the capital and other areas since Friday night, and the airports were closed for safety.
Ash is very dangerous for planes. In June 1982, a British Airways plane flew into ash from another Indonesian volcano near Jakarta. All four engines stopped. The captain, Eric Moody, told the passengers that all four engines had stopped and the crew were trying to start them again. The crew started the engines again and landed the plane safely.
Anak Krakatau is dangerous too. In December 2018, one side of the volcano fell into the sea. It made a big wave, and 430 people died.
In 2010, ash from a volcano in Iceland stopped planes in Europe for days. A scientist in Iceland, Einar Kjartansson, said the ash would come for days or weeks. But he said the problem for travellers depended on the wind.