While we hear of flights returning to their origin every so often, this one has to set some sort of a record. Long story short, an Air New Zealand Boeing 787 flew from Auckland to Auckland in a bit over 16 hours…
Continue reading: Air New Zealand’s Surprising 16+ Hour Flight To Nowhere
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I assume this must have been a terrible situation for the pax, unless you didn't have any "need" to be on time in JFK or flying Business Class. Many other Carriers did the same, like AZ.
But hey, see it the positive way, it's unlikely those passengers will ever have a similar situation anytime. 🙂
I've always wondered, what happens in terms of mileage accrual on these flights? I assume if the flight is listed as cancelled, you get nothing?
@JS,
I believe you're right. You get nothing but your flight will still happen if you want, so you will get your miles on the next flight.
Yeah, a crew and another plane can be ready to take passengers to JFK immediately after that flight-to-nowhere lands at AKL, but would subject passengers to 32 hours of flying.
Why not fly to LAX, then rebook the passengers on UA to EWR? Plus, they already have the hotel agreements in place for the crew, since NZ already flies there.
Shows how dangerous Air New Zealand is. If there is a mechanical problem, they would rather die trying to get back to Auckland than land.
Due to the JFK situation, EWR has imposed restrictions on arrivals not previously scheduled. (except actual inflight emergencies)
There is some serious logistics failure here. There's 4 other terminals at JFK, all of which are set up for international arrivals. Hell, T7 is pretty much vacant at this point given the BA move, to say nothing of EWR.
This is a pretty big failure of management that there's zero contingency for something like a power failure in a terminal with only like 9 gates.
Hi, I was on NZ2 and I don’t believe for a moment that another terminal or east coast airport was not an option. We received absolutely no communication aboard (we found out by looking at flight tracker when most people began to realize the plane had turned around.) About 45 min before landing the pilot, who sounded annoyed with this decision told passengers that we would be landing in Auckland. I later spoke with the pilot and he acknowledged that he was hoping to land somewhere on the east coast.
I read your post and although I appreciate that there may have been on the ground scheduling problems say if we landed in EWR, consider this…
- it was total chaos in Auckland and the customer service was dismal… so not sure if the customer experience was improved at AirNZ hub
- the flight was destined for the NY area… so that’s where most passengers were going…for those going onward (to Europe) they were likely flying other carriers and ANz wouldn’t need to worry about it
- if you know the NJ/NY area, you know that getting between the 1/2 dozen airports is relatively easy and inexpensive for those folks who did need to get back to JFK
- same goes for people who live in the NY metro area… a train would take them home from EWR, Dulles, Philadelphia etc,
So basically getting us to east coast would have been the most convenient for the passengers. But perhaps I’ve misunderstood ANZ’s priority… it seems they were concerned with their convenience and I’m guessing costs.
Bottom line, we NZ 2 passengers paid for a flight to JFK… not to the middle of the Pacific and back to Auckland. I acknowledge the JFK problems but ANZ clearly put their priorities before taking care of the 200 people on their plane already IN THE AIR.
Unfortunately I have another 1/2 dozen ANZ flights already booked… but they will be my last ANZ flights.
In my limited experience with Air New Zealand their operational decisions Don't always make sense. I flew from CHC ro AKL a couple days ago and spent 2 hours on the tarmac because of the high wind due to ground crew safety. After getting to the gate the bags didn't get unloaded until the following day, again due to high winds and ground safety, although all international flights and other domestic flights were operating l.
Yep LAX seemed a really obvious alternative to me too given they already have agreements and crew there!
Same for an ITA flight from MXP https://www.milanotoday.it/attualita/volo-new-york-dirottato-malpensa.html, for sure a shorter flight, but damn!
Okay, so divert to IAD then. You get support from United, options to get people to NYC, and you don't piss off a plane load of people cramming them in for sixteen hours to end up nowhere.
A pissed-off mob, in this case, could not be dismissed as a bunch of "Karens". They were subjected to one of the longest flights in the world, just to end up no closer to their destination. To add insult to injury, any layman can see a large number of diversion opportunities that would at least put people within spitting distance of NYC, their intended destination.
ANZ apparently learned how to handle irregular operations from Southwest. If the passengers were to riot in Auckland, I'd be hard-pressed to vote to convict on any charge if I was a juror.
That is true. Given all the options available to get the passengers within spitting distance of NYC, which even a layman can see, I doubt many of these passengers will voluntarily give ANZ the opportunity to give them the same treatment again, ever.
We'll sometime see cases of flights returning to hub because a diversion to a different country could cause all sorts of problems with visas and immigration status of passengers. That obviously isn't an issue here since all the logical diversion points were in the US anyway. I get that diversions can be expensive because of having to find hotel rooms for passengers but operating a single long-haul flight probably costs a decent ways into the six figures. I'm not really convinced that returning to origin, especially that far into a flight, would really save money. In my mind the only barrier would be logistics. Yes, crews have time limits and gate space has to be acquired, and diverting to Newark may have caused problems since ANZ doesn't normally fly there (which still isn't too convincing an argument for me). Nonetheless I still don't know why any one of LA, Honolulu, San Francisco, Houston or Chicago couldn't be considered. ANZ flies to all of those places and those latter two cities have frequencies that are less than daily so they probably had a crew just sitting around on the ground and I don't think bumping up the crew to work the diverted flight would have left a subsequent flight without a crew. Only remaining problem is getting pax to their final destinations. I get that rebooking them on to UA may not be as straightforward as it seems since introducing a 787 worth of passengers into a route network that extensive isn't going to be totally seamless. If the ANZ plane were to divert to another airport and a.) wait around for JFK T1 to open or b.) fly to Newark instead surely that wouldn't be considered an 8th freedom flight and cause legal problems right? Could a layover crew on the ground operate a flight from whatever hub to NYC and back?
I actually graduated from college with a degree in economics last year, and incorporated the economics of airlines extensively into my studies. I'm thinking of pursuing a graduate degree and these sorts of things would be fascinating to be able to learn more in depth about.
EWR EWR EWR EWR!!!!!!
You have got 8 hours to talk to United, re position your outbound flight crew, notify as many passengers as possible, iron any possible kinks with Customs, FAA, Port Authority etc etc etc land in NYC at your Star Alliance partner second largest hub. It was absolutely criminal.
The other cities don't have crew sitting around. They have crews getting minimum rest requirements.
It would save money by having the plane back on schedule flying people. Sure maybe 200ish on flight. But if plane gets stuck down range you know have 1000s of people disrupted. Remember AirNZ has no extra planes at the moment as trying to move the backlog from the recent cyclone.
Not really the 777-300s are serving LAX mostly at the moment so the plane would be stuck in LAX for days until can get crew there and rested before flying the plane back to AKL.
In that time the 200 inconvenienced people are now 2000 people as the plane isn't flying. Remember AirNZ is still recovering from the cyclone and all the spare planes are deployed trying to get through the backlog.
Yes if you looked at the bigger picture you will observe the main IRROP at the moment is getting through the backlog of people after the cyclone. With all planes deployed they don't want a plane stuck at random airport not flying pax waiting to get a crew there.
Yep they have learned from the Southwest melt down. Don't get planes stuck at airports which have no rested crew to fly the plane on the next sector and thus avoiding causing a massive cascade of cancellations as the plane isn't where it is scheduled to be.
Getting the plane back to AKL was the best way to stop a cascade of cancellations.
Typically the miles will post per the original flight mileage, although sometimes you'll need to contact the airline or the airline you're accruing to in order to get them posted.
In this case, miles should accrue for NZ2 (AKL-JFK), then additionally for whatever flight(s) passengers were rebooked to.
I guess after having yet another 1.5 days of flight cancellation last week due to the cyclone in NZ, after the 2 days of flights cancellation a couple of weeks ago due to the flood at Auckland Airport.
Air NZ really couldn't afford to have a plane sit on the ground in the USA for a few extra hours. They already got way more misplaced passengers than they could handle so they'd rather get the plane back to help clear the backlog of passengers. Waiting 12 hours at Houston or wherever before taking off again to New York (and then it still takes another 18hrs to get the plane back to Auckland) would have been too time consuming for Air NZ given the situation they are in already.