Bomb and hijack claim sent Indonesia's second-busiest airport searching two boarded flights

Bali's main airport searched two boarded international flights after a message falsely warned that a woman was carrying a bomb and planned to hijack a departing plane. The airport received the electronic message at 9:58 p.m. on Aug. 2, Gede Eka Sandi Asmadi, communication and legal division head at Ngurah Rai airport, told Kompas.The airport security committee and other agencies immediately triggered standard threat-response procedures and found no indication the claim was true, he said, adding that flights and passenger services have run normally throughout.Tribun Bali reported that the message arrived as a WhatsApp to the InJourney Airports contact center from a sender identified by police only by the initials EPD, and that it named a woman by the initials LH as carrying a homemade bomb.The emergency alert did not reach the Airport Security Services team until 12:44 a.m. on Aug. 3, nearly three hours after the message landed, according to the same report. The airport was placed on Siaga I, its highest alert status, and aviation security, police and military personnel carried out a joint sweep focused on two international flights whose passengers were already aboard.Criminal investigators began follow-up work as soon as the report came in and have summoned those who received the message, Second Insp. I Gede Suka Artana, spokesman for the Ngurah Rai airport police, told Tribunnews. He told CNN Indonesia that security at the airport is stable and flights are operating as scheduled.No arrest has been announced. A Wings Air ATR 72 aircraft (top) makes its final approach for landing as other aircraft wait along a taxiway for departure at the Ngurah Rai International airport in Denpasar on Bali island on Oct. 4, 2017. Photo by AFP Asmadi warned the public against joking about or spreading false information concerning airport security.Airports are designated national vital objects under Indonesian law, he told Antara, and circulating false threat information is a serious offense carrying criminal penalties.Ngurah Rai, located at Tuban in Kuta, Badung regency, about 13 km from Denpasar, is Bali's main aviation gateway and Indonesia's second-busiest airport after Soekarno-Hatta near Jakarta.It handled 24,125,161 passengers in 2025, roughly 63% of them on international routes, along with 143,312 aircraft movements. Jakarta was the busiest destination at 4.23 million passengers, followed by Singapore at 2.69 million, Kuala Lumpur at 1.76 million and Melbourne at 1.15 million.A terminal optimization program now under way is designed to lift annual capacity from 24 million to 32 million passengers.