Power cut at JFK airport forces flight to return to New Zealand after covering 7,000km

Electrical fire affected at least 135 flights, including long-haul journeys

An Air New Zealand flight to New York's JFK international airport had to return to Auckland halfway through its 14,000-kilometre journey. Reuters

Passengers boarding a trans-Pacific flight from Auckland to New York on Thursday evening had no idea of the rude awakening that awaited them: a 16-hour ordeal that took them back to square one.

Air New Zealand Flight NZ2 should have touched down at John F Kennedy International Airport Terminal 1 at 5.40pm local time, but a power cut threw operations into disarray, affecting at least 135 flights.

Data from Flightradar24’s website showed the Boeing 787 jet making a U-turn about halfway into its nearly 14,000-kilometre 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.

“Due to an electrical fire in Terminal 1 at JFK Airport and the terminal’s subsequent closure, NZ2 Auckland to New York was forced to divert back to Auckland,” Air New Zealand said in a statement.

“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.”

The carrier said the company was working to rebook passengers on the next available flights.

There was a similar incident in January, when an Emirates flight from Dubai to Auckland turned back because of flooding at its destination. The closure of Auckland airport, New Zealand’s biggest, sparked a major operation by Air New Zealand to bring back more than 9,000 customers from overseas.

The passengers from Auckland were not the only ones to experience such difficulties. A Korean Air Lines flight bound for New York from Seoul’s Incheon International Airport was just off the coast of Alaska before having to turn back because of the JFK cut.

“The airline recognised that a diversion was inevitable about 5 hours and 30 minutes into the 14-hour flight,” an airline representative said. “All options have been considered, and a decision was made to return to Incheon in light of multiple factors such as distance travelled and operational circumstances.”

That would have been little comfort for the passengers, who landed back where they started in South Korea at 10.14am on Friday after a nearly 14-hour journey.