Passengers on one of Qantas’ longest flights were in for a particularly long journey recently, when the airline had to divert over the South Pacific, landing in another country. Matters only got more complicated from there, when the crew timed out.
In this post:
Qantas’ New York to Auckland flight diverts to Nadi, Fiji
Qantas operates a flight from New York (JFK) to Sydney (SYD) via Auckland (AKL). In 2026, the airline plans to fly nonstop between New York and Sydney, once it takes delivery of Airbus A350-1000s. In the meantime, this service operates via New Zealand, with the long haul sector being a fifth freedom flight, meaning passengers can fly Qantas exclusively between the United States and New Zealand.
The route ordinarily operates with the following schedule:
QF4 New York to Auckland departing 7:20PM arriving 6:00AM (+2 days)
QF4 Auckland to Sydney departing 8:00AM arriving 9:35AM
That first segment generally clocks in at over 16 hours in the air, while the second segment typically has a flight time of over three hours.
This particular incident involves the flight from New York to Auckland on October 2, 2024, which was operated by a three-year-old Boeing 787-9 with the registration code on VH-ZNN.
The aircraft departed New York roughly on-time (it took off at 8:07PM local time), and began the marathon journey across North America, and then across the Pacific. Everything was looking good until around an hour before the aircraft was due to land in Auckland.
There was bad fog at the airport, impacting the ability for planes to land. As a result, a diversion was needed. However, rather than diverting to another airport in New Zealand, the decision was instead made to divert to Nadi, Fiji (NAN). So the jet made a turn to the northwest, and landed there at 4:38AM local time on October 4, 2024, after a 16hr30min journey.
While there has been no public statement about why the 787 diverted to Fiji rather than to another airport in New Zealand, I suspect it’s a function of having sufficient fuel. Auckland is in the very north of New Zealand, so perhaps the 787 didn’t have enough fuel (while factoring in minimum reserves) to get to another airport further south in New Zealand. Or maybe conditions there were equally bad.
Qantas crew times out, leaving flight stranded
There are a maximum number of hours that crews can work. Obviously after a flight of this length, pilots and flight attendants are exhausted, so the crew ended up timing out, having maxed out their legal hours. So at this point the airline was stuck with a planeload of passengers in a foreign country, without easy access to a rested crew.
As you’d expect, assembling an entire 787 crew doesn’t happen instantly, and that’s not even factoring in the need to fly them to another airport that’s hours from where they’re based.
For passengers, there was good news and bad news. The good news was that the airline did a pretty good job finding a replacement crew. The bad news was that this still required a wait of around 12 hours.
Qantas sends rescue crew, flies 787 to Sydney
Qantas managed to find a replacement crew, and based on the timing, I suspect that the crew flew on Qantas’ scheduled Boeing 737-800 flight from Sydney to Nadi, departing at 8:35AM and arriving at 2:35PM.
Upon arrival in Fiji, the crew took over on the stranded 787, and the jet took off from Nadi at 4:48PM. It’s not entirely clear what happened to the passengers for the 12 hours they were on the ground, but suffice it to say that this sounds quite unpleasant.
Once airborne, there was another twist. Rather than flying to Auckland, the intended immediate destination, the jet instead flew to Sydney, where it landed at 7:09PM local time, after a 4hr21min flight. The aircraft arrived in Sydney around 10 hours behind schedule.
Now, keep in mind that some passengers were intending to travel to Auckland, since the airline has pick-up rights there. So why would Qantas just skip Auckland, and fly straight to Sydney?
- I imagine the replacement crew could legally operate one flight, but probably not two flights, given that they were deadheading to get to Nadi in the first place
- While there may have been a crew in Auckland waiting to operate the planned flight, it’s possible that the flight would’ve then been pushing up against Sydney’s curfew, and would need to be delayed by an extra day
- Presumably Qantas wanted to get the 787 back to base and into regular service as soon as possible, so flying the plane to Sydney accomplished that, rather than it having to spend a night in Auckland
- I imagine a majority of passengers on the flight weren’t terminating in Auckland, but rather were intending to fly to Sydney and beyond
For those who were intending to fly to Auckland, this was an even longer journey. They had to spend the night in Sydney, and then traveled to Auckland (or their final destination) the following day.
Bottom line
One of Qantas’ longest flights had quite the journey a few days ago. The New York to Auckland service had to divert to Nadi, after fog in Auckland prevented the plane from landing. The crew then timed out, so Qantas had to fly a replacement crew to Nadi to continue the journey. However, at that point the decision was made to just skip Auckland, and instead fly straight to Sydney.
What do you make of this Qantas 787 diversion to Fiji?
You are pretty much right. Most passengers are heading to Australia. So made sense to go to Sydney for them, the ac schedule and crew. They have a NZ crew base but due to other factors mentioned best to get to final destination. Fog affects most of the main airports that they could divert to in nz. So risk aversion means Nadi. Air NZ operates this route and has also had to divert on occasion.
They did what they had to do. It's unfortunate but sometimes happens. There are lots of things that go on behind the scenes and it appears to have been managed as best as could be expected. Finding a replacement crew was a win.
Thanks for another great article. And yes, you are 100 per cent right to stay away from AI (tacky glorified search engines) - your writing is beautifully human and I'm sick to death of artificial AI text elsewhere, devoid of grammatical diversions and other quirks that make your writing "readable".
It seems to me at least that these ultralonghaul flights are highly wasteful when you also factor in how often something goes wrong with them. Which, at the very edges of the operational envelope of the aircraft (and the crews), is relatively often. The nature of the flights is already a huge fuel waster (having to carry so many tons of extra just to be able to go nonstop). And then as soon as the...
It seems to me at least that these ultralonghaul flights are highly wasteful when you also factor in how often something goes wrong with them. Which, at the very edges of the operational envelope of the aircraft (and the crews), is relatively often. The nature of the flights is already a huge fuel waster (having to carry so many tons of extra just to be able to go nonstop). And then as soon as the slightest thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong really badly.
There has been no way in human history that you could get from Australia to NYC in one hop, I don't know why we have to try so hard to make this a thing. By comparison, Qantas's aggregation of BNE/MEL/SYD flights in LAX and then onward tag with 1 plane (good!) to NYC has worked for a long time, and saves so much gas compared to this.
This just seems like a waste.
Hello, we found a dinosaur.
The Jurassic wants Eric Schmidt back.
Neanderthals lived fine in without technology or commercial aviation.
And they saved a lot of gas.
Eric Schmidt go live in a cave and walk. It's not wasteful.
I was once on a QF LAX-BNE flight that diverted to NAN due to fog at BNE. My regret is that we didn't get a nice long layover!
Anyways, I don't find much about the diversion much of a big deal, except perhaps for those requiring an additional connection in SYD.
I think the answer of 'why Fiji' is quite simple: runway length. As we all know, the recommended runway length for a 787 with payload is about 3000m.
Auckland is one of two commercial airports in New Zealand with a runway over 3000m. The other one being Christchurch, which is well over an hour away, being about halfway the South Island, and thus further to the south than Auckland. We don't know how the...
I think the answer of 'why Fiji' is quite simple: runway length. As we all know, the recommended runway length for a 787 with payload is about 3000m.
Auckland is one of two commercial airports in New Zealand with a runway over 3000m. The other one being Christchurch, which is well over an hour away, being about halfway the South Island, and thus further to the south than Auckland. We don't know how the weather was there, but I can imagine that an extra hour of flying was a bit too much at the end of this marathon.
A 787 along with 350 and 747’s can absolutely land at WLG, PMR and Ohakea at the end of a flight with no problem. CHC just makes logistics a little easier as the days of regular wide bodies at WLG are long gone
There are 5 flights a day to AKL from NAN. FJ / NZ. Given this is mostly a through flight…..they could reroute the AKL local traffic easily on NZ and FJ.
I’m getting a feeling a lot of these posts are getting more AI writing.
@ Isaac -- Sorry you seemingly didn't enjoy the post, but I can assure you there's zero AI writing here. I wouldn't even know how to do that. ;-)
Yes, there are nonstop flights between Auckland and Nadi (three to four, as far as I can tell, and not five), and it's possible that passengers were routed onto one of those. However, for diversions, it's not unusual for airlines not to allow that, given the...
@ Isaac -- Sorry you seemingly didn't enjoy the post, but I can assure you there's zero AI writing here. I wouldn't even know how to do that. ;-)
Yes, there are nonstop flights between Auckland and Nadi (three to four, as far as I can tell, and not five), and it's possible that passengers were routed onto one of those. However, for diversions, it's not unusual for airlines not to allow that, given the complexity involved, especially if people have checked bags.
So yes, I probably should have mentioned that, but I promise you it doesn't mean this post is generated by AI.
I, for one, enjoy a majority of Ben’s quality and informative articles, unlike another website that is hardly a thought leader full of articles that are more suited for The Enquirer. He could probably benefit from AI as many of his articles seem like they were written when he’s had a few too many to drink. For the few articles that do not pique my interest, I don’t open them.
@767-223: Ben's articles that "seem like they were written when he’s had a few too many to drink" are often really fun to read.
@Ben: Please keep them coming!
I think this response is actually AI. It looks like AI, written like AI and smells of AI. Disregard the original comment.
My understanding is this is only possible if QF has traffic rights between the US and Fiji. I was took CX's SFO-HKG-TPE and the SFO-HKG flight was diverted to TPE. I could not terminate there as CX did not have traffic rights between the US and Taiwan. Obviously, if a particular pax has a medical emergency, that's another story.
Fun fact - Fiji Airways files 2x daily to Auckland with their A330 and code shares it with QF. Most-to all FJ flights are code shared with QF. QF has a 16 percent minority stake in FJ, down from 48 percent pre-pandemic.