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Tropical cyclone Gabrielle caused chaos at Auckland Airport on Tuesday afternoon, as some airlines decided to try and resume services into the city, only to turn back and land where they came from.
The longest so-called ‘flight to nowhere’ was SQ281, which was due to land in Auckland late on Tuesday. The flight from Singapore normally takes around nine hours 25 minutes, however, four hours into the journey the plane turned around over the Timor Sea just off the coast of Darwin.
It then returned to Singapore, for a total time in the sky of around eight hours.
Passengers aboard a LATAM flight got much closer – their plane flew right over Auckland Airport only to make a five-hour trip to nowhere.
Screenshot
A Singapore Airlines flight took an eight-hour flight to nowhere after deciding to return to Singapore instead of continuing onto Auckland.
The LATAM flight, which is a South American carrier, took off from Sydney bound for Auckland on Tuesday afternoon. The 787 Dreamliner makes a stop in Auckland, before continuing to Santiago in Chile.
The flight was due to land in Auckland around 4.30pm on Tuesday, however data from FlightRadar24 revealed it instead entered a holding pattern above the suburb of Beachlands.
After a few circuits, a decision was made to return all the way to Sydney – a trip that took five hours and 31 minutes and ended passengers where they started. The plane flew at 8000 feet above Auckland Airport on its way out of the city.
While the LATAM flight was holding above Auckland, an Air Asia A330 was also waiting to land – and safely landed about 30 minutes later.
FlightRadar24
The LATAM flight had a return flight to Sydney of more than five hours.
A number of domestic Jestar flights were also able to make it into and out of Auckland Airport yesterday.
Meanwhile, Air New Zealand halted its planned restart of domestic flying on Tuesday, and decided to divert many of its international flights during the same period. A flight from Honolulu flew straight over Auckland to Christchurch and others from Australia were diverted to either Wellington or Christchurch.
An Air China flight from Brisbane turned around halfway across the Tasman and returned to Australia.
On Wednesday, domestic and international flights are resuming – albeit with a few cancellations.
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