Special flights laid on but some Aussies stay put

Special flights laid on but some Aussies stay put

Agence France-Presse, Sydney, Australia

Australian airline Qantas laid on special flights to Bali on Sunday to pick up Australians wanting to flee the Indonesian island after the latest bombings, but some holidaymakers refused to change their vacation plans.

A Boeing 767-300 would fly from Sydney to Denpasar and might be followed by a second flight from Perth to Bali on later Sunday, Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said in a statement.

"Qantas will send a 230-seat Boeing 767-300 from Sydney later today to help Australians wishing to leave Bali," Dixon said.

"Additional Qantas staff, including medical and security personnel as well as a team from (aid agency) CARE Australia, will be on board to help our Bali-based staff meet the needs of Australians in Bali."

Dixon said Australian Airlines and Qantas had implemented a special waiver and refund policy for travel to Bali and Indonesia and people canceling trips would not incur penalties.

Prime Minister John Howard urged Australians to "think very hard about going to Bali" following the blasts which killed 26 people and said those already there should consider leaving.

Australia did not have any specific intelligence that another attack on Bali was imminent, but had for some time warned in its travel advice that attacks were possible.

Indonesia "remains a very dangerous place," Howard said.

But as the first shocked survivors of the Bali bombings arrived home in Australia, others refused to change their holiday plans and flew out to the scene of the carnage.

Almost all passengers booked through one travel agent on an Air Paradise flight from the southern city of Adelaide to Bali on Sunday morning boarded the plane just hours after the attacks, the company said.

"We actually had 29 passengers booked on the flight and 27 traveled," Golden Bali and Global Travel managing director Les Williams told AFP.

The agency had offered its clients already in Bali the opportunity to return home early but none had taken up the offer, he said.

"I'm quite surprised we haven't had a stronger reaction."

Bali has long been a prime tourist destination for Australians, and families had flocked there for the current school holidays as tourism picked up again after the 2002 bombings which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

"Unquestionably there will be some immediate damage (to Bali tourism) but I'd like to think in the long term it won't be as severe as in first instance," Williams said.

"People are becoming accustomed to terrorism, there are so many attacks all around the world."

In the northern city of Darwin the first Australians to arrive home following the blasts vowed to return to the island, the Australian Associated Press reported.

One passenger, Lincoln McLeod, said he had also been in Bali during the first bombing in 2002 and would "probably return one day".

"This is the second time," he said. "I was there for the last one. It doesn't seem quite real. There was a lot of panic.

"I don't blame the people (there) because it's not the people," he said. "They love having tourists ... for this to happen again it's just going to kill their economy, I would say."

Australian teacher David Eldridge told AFP by telephone from Bali that he and his wife Vivien would not cut short their two- week holiday which began the day before the attacks.

"No, no, we are going to stay," said Eldridge, who is due to attend a writers' festival in the Bali town of Ubud.

"The Balinese people are very upset and there's a kind of identification with them," he said. "We're in the same boat. I don't feel I'm in any danger. It's not as though we're amongst a bunch of hostile people."