Bali welcomes first international flight in nearly two years

Indonesia's holiday island of Bali on Thursday welcomed its first direct international flight in nearly two years, as the government plots a full reopening of the popular tourist destination. But the jetliner only carried a couple of handfuls of travelers, leaving any schedule for future flights unclear and the tourism-dependent island with little hope that its plight might soon be over. A Garuda Indonesia flight from Japan's Narita International Airport arrived with 12 people on board -- six Japanese and six Indonesians -- Nyoman Gede Gunadika, head of the Bali Tourism Board, told Nikkei Asia. Since Indonesia has not restarted its visa on arrival process nor come up with a tourism visa scheme, the Japanese nationals are arriving on business visas, Gunadika added. While Indonesia had opened Bali to flights from select countries in October, no direct flights had arrived at the island before the Garuda flight. Indonesia's flagship carrier had planned for a weekly flight between Japan's Haneda Airport and Jakarta, with a stop in Bali, to begin in December but scrapped the plan due to omicron variant concerns. <br/>