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Passengers boarding a trans-Pacific flight from Auckland to New York on Thursday evening had no idea that they’d be back to where they started 16 hours later.
Air New Zealand flight NZ2 should have touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 1 in New York at 5.40pm local time. Instead, a power outage threw operations into disarray, affecting at least 135 flights into and out of the city.
Data from Flightradar24’s website showed the Boeing 787 jet making a U-turn about halfway into its nearly 14,000 kilometres journey over the Pacific Ocean, just south of Hawaii.
Terminal 1 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport remained closed Friday while operators worked to restore flight operations.
Air New Zealand said turning back was the best option for flight NZ2.
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“Diverting to another US port would have meant the aircraft would remain on the ground for several days, impacting a number of other scheduled services and customers,” it said in a statement.
The carrier said the company was working to rebook passengers on the next available flights.
The turnaround echoed a similar incident in January, when an Emirates flight from Dubai to Auckland turned back due to flooding at its destination, treating passengers to a 13-hour flight to nowhere. The closure of Auckland Airport, New Zealand’s biggest, sparked a major operation by Air New Zealand to bring back over 9000 customers trapped overseas.
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