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In just one of the latest examples of just how bad the current haze crisis is, a Qantas flight from Brisbane heading to Singapore was forced to make an emergency landing at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport yesterday afternoon after the pilot decided that the dense smoke between his plane and Singapore was too dangerous to navigate.
“Yes, Qantas QF51 to Singapore wanted to make an emergency landing at Soekarno-Hatta Airport. The pilot sent a request to the control tower at 4:45 pm in order to be able to land at Soekarno-Hatta,” said the general manager of Jakarta’s Air Traffic Service Centre, Bambang Rianto, as quoted by Kompas yesterday.
Bambang said the pilot reported that the visibility was below the safety standard of 1,400 meters. Based on his report, the control tower officer grant his request for an emergency landing and the plane touched down at Soekarno-Hatta at 5:51pm.
“The plane landed at 5:51 pm. Until now, the aircraft is parked at Terminal 2 while waiting smog conditions return to normal,” said Bambang.
According to data from Flight Radar, the plane was stuck in Jakarta for about 2 hours before the pilot felt it was safe to continue the flight to Singapore, where it landed without further incident.
Qantas is famous for being the world’s safest airline, having never suffered a single fatal jetliner accident.
Besides causing numerous flight cancellations, toxic smoke from latest haze crisis has also caused massive health problems and political strife between Indonesia and its neighboring countries. Who’s to blame? It’s… complicated. To learn more, check out our documentary:
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