Indonesia’s Forest Fire Haze Has Now Disrupted 2,604 Flights Since August, and It Is Spreading East

Smoke from Indonesia’s forest and land fires has disrupted 2,604 scheduled domestic flights between August 11 and October 19, 2026, the Ministry of Transportation said on October 20. Of those, 1,420 flights were canceled or postponed.

The figures came from Lukman F. Laisa, the ministry’s Director General of Air Transportation, as reported by Antara, the state news agency. The tally rose by 146 flights in two days, from 2,458 on October 17.

What the ministry’s numbers show

Beyond the 1,420 cancellations and postponements, the ministry counted 1,129 delayed flights. Another 23 diverted to other airports, six returned to their departure airport and 26 had their schedules moved earlier.

Fourteen international flights were canceled as well, all of them to or from Singapore. Twelve were on the Singapore to Pontianak route, counted in both directions, between September 12 and 23, because of smoke at Pontianak’s Supadio Airport.

The other two were a Singapore to Palembang round trip on October 15, canceled because of smoke at Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II Airport. On the ministry’s figures, the international cuts are a small fraction of the disruption on domestic routes.

“We continue to strengthen operational flight monitoring and control,” Laisa said. He added that schedules can be adjusted when conditions on the ground do not allow flights to operate safely.

The haze has moved from Sumatra and Kalimantan to the east

Until mid-October, the airports named in the ministry’s updates were mostly in Kalimantan and Sumatra, with two in Papua. Between October 13 and 17, the ministry said, the smoke also reached Sulawesi, Maluku and North Maluku, on top of Kalimantan, Papua and Sumatra.

The airports it named include Palu, Ternate, Ambon, Timika and Sorong in the east, plus Pontianak, Pekanbaru and Palembang in the west. Laisa had flagged the shift in mid-October, saying the impact had recently spread to airports in eastern Indonesia, including Maluku and Papua.

The pace has picked up. On October 12 the ministry put the total for August 11 to October 9 at 1,673 flights, with 907 canceled or postponed, so the past ten days of data added 931 disrupted flights and 513 more cancellations.

That earlier count named the airlines hit hardest. Citilink led with 478 affected flights, followed by NAM Air with 300 and Wings Air with 227, out of 10 carriers, Kontan reported. The October 20 update did not break the figures down by airline.

Why smoke grounds flights

Haze is a visibility problem. Instrument approaches have published visibility minimums, and when the reported visibility falls below them, crews cannot continue to a landing, even if the sky above the smoke is clear. Departures face similar limits.

How low that minimum sits depends largely on the approach an airport offers. An instrument landing system guides an aircraft both laterally and vertically, so it generally allows lower minimums than an approach without vertical guidance.

Palembang gives a sense of the margins. On October 8, the airport’s general manager said visibility fell below its minimum operating threshold of 600 meters (about 2,000 feet), and five flights were delayed, according to a Jakarta Post report carried by The Star.

The same report said a Lion Air flight from Jakarta returned to Soekarno-Hatta on October 7 after it could not land at Pekanbaru, while a Citilink flight diverted to Batam. Fog often lifts by late morning, but smoke can hang over an airport for days, which helps explain why cancellations outnumber delays in the ministry’s count.

Indonesia’s airports were already tested this season by a different hazard: volcanic ash from the Anak Krakatau eruption shut eight of them, Jakarta included, in early September.

How this season compares

The severe 2015 haze season is the usual benchmark. Back then, state airport operator Angkasa Pura II said about 3,000 flights were affected at its airports between September 1 and October 10, 2015, with Jambi and Pekanbaru worst hit, followed by Pontianak, Republika reported.

That figure covered one operator’s airports over about six weeks, while the 2026 tally is a nationwide ministry count over more than two months, so the two are not directly comparable. Several of the same airports, including Jambi and Pontianak, appear on both seasons’ lists.

In 2019, Pontianak’s Supadio Airport closed outright and the Lion Air Group logged 81 cancellations, 63 delays and nine diversions in a single day, AIN reported at the time.

The ministry’s October 20 statement gave no date for when it expects flight operations to return to normal.