Air NZ flight returns to same airport after 16 hours

Passengers of an Air New Zealand flight to New York experienced a rude shock when their trans-Pacific flight made a U-turn halfway, resulting a 16-hour nightmare that brought them back where they started.

Air New Zealand Flight NZ2 departed Auckland Thursday (Feb 16)  evening but diverted back to Auckland around eight hours into the flight due to a fire incident at the arrival destination at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JKF Airport). The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner landed back in Auckland at around 1 PM on Friday, spending 16-hours in a flight to nowhere.

A power outage threw operations into disarray at the JFK Airport, affecting at least 135 flights. Data from Flightradar24’s website showed the Boeing 787 jet made a u-turn about halfway into its nearly 9,000-mile (14,000 kilometer) journey over the Pacific Ocean, just south of Hawaii. The turnaround made the jet the top-tracked flight on the site, which monitors aircraft all over the world in real time.

-B