Haze Disrupts 24 Flights in Pekanbaru

Pekanbaru (Antara) - At least 24 flights were delayed for hours at Bakanbaru's Sultan Syarif Kasim II (SSK II) Airport due to thick haze blanketing the Riau Provincial city of Pekanbaru on Saturday, an airport official said. "The longest delay, reaching nine hours, happened with a Lion Air plane from Kuala Namu airport, North Sumatra, to Pekanbaru's SSK II airport," Hasnan, the airport duty manager, said here on Saturday. The Lion Air plane was scheduled to arrive at SSK II airport at 7 am, but due to thick smoke the plane did not land until 4 pm. He said other flights had an average delay of about three hours. "Visibility happened to drop to 800 meters because of the smog that covered the airport," he added. Baiquni, who took over as airport duty manager on Saturday night said, on average, there were 10 scheduled flights that were disrupted every day. Thus, over the past three weeks about 210 flights were delayed at the SSK II airport in Pekanbaru. Those flights included domestic and international flights. The Terra and Aqua satellite has detected 1,046 hotspots from forests, plantations and peatland fires across Sumatra Island, it was reported Saturday morning. "Of the total number, 963 were found in Riau Province. The number is significantly up from those on the previous day," Sugarin, the head of the Pekanbaru meteorological, climatology and geophysics agency, said here on Saturday. (*)