Tigerair has immediately cancelled all flights between Australia and Bali and says it will no longer offer the route after encountering regulatory problems in Indonesia.

The low-cost airline said it had been told by Indonesian authorities to find an “alternative regulatory solution” for its Bali operations, which the carrier said would take at least six months and raise costs.

On Friday the airline’s call centre was swamped with inquiries after the day’s flights to Denpasar from Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide – flight numbers TT1, TT17 and TT19 – were cancelled. The inbound flights were also scrapped. To ease the congestion, the airline advised in a statement that passengers should await “proactive communications about their flights”.

The cancellations were flagged on Thursday night as a temporary measure pending “final procedural approvals” from Indonesian authorities. But on Friday the move was made permanent.

The airline’s chief executive, Rob Sharp, offered his apologies to affected passengers, saying: “In order to continue operating our flights to Bali we would have to transfer to a new operating model that would take at least six months to implement and would compromise our ability to offer low-cost airfares to Australians.”



Tigerair said passengers would receive a full refund and Australian-bound customers would be redirected to services operated by Virgin Australia or another carrier.

The airline would now focus on “alternative opportunities”, Sharp said.

Tigerair’s domestic Australian flights are not affected.