Visibility drops to 70 metres, Nabire Airport cancels two flights
Visibility dropped to below 70 metres due to smoke from forest and land fires, prompting Douw Aturure Airport in Nabire, Central Papua, to cancel two flights on Friday.
Acting Head of the Class II Airport Organising Unit for Douw Aturure Nabire, Alrido Simanjuntak, said the two affected flights were Nam Air on the Nabire–Makassar route and Wings Air on the Timika–Nabire route.
“Visibility had already fallen below 70 metres, whereas the required visibility for flights should be 5 kilometres. Because of these conditions, two flights were affected by the smoke,” he said.
According to Alrido, the situation led to the closure of Douw Aturure Airport at around 15:30 WIT to prioritise the safety of flights, passengers and crew.
He said visibility began to improve after more than an hour, reaching about 100 metres, but this was still not enough to ensure flight operations could return to normal.
“For tomorrow I cannot yet confirm. Firefighters are still working to prevent the fire from spreading into the airport area,” he said.
He explained that the smoke originated from land burning by residents around the airport area. The fire point was located about 70 metres from the airport perimeter fence, while the smoke drifted into the airport grounds.
“The fire itself has not entered because our firefighting unit colleagues are working to keep the flames away from the runway area. It is the smoke that has entered,” he said.
Airport firefighters continued to spray water on vegetation along the perimeter fence to prevent the fire from spreading into the airport grounds.
Before conditions deteriorated, the airport had urged residents through village heads, sub-district heads and places of worship not to carry out land burning.
He said flight operations from morning until midday proceeded safely. Disruption only occurred on afternoon flights due to the drop in visibility.
Under normal conditions, Douw Aturure Airport in Nabire handles around 40 aircraft movements, or 20 to 25 flights, each day, starting at 06:30 WIT.