Flights to nowhere: JFK terminal closure forces dozens of planes to turn back

Passengers boarding a trans-Pacific flight from Auckland to New York on Thursday evening had no idea that they’d be back to where they started 16 hours later.

Air New Zealand flight NZ2 should have touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 1 in New York at 5.40pm local time. Instead, a power outage threw operations into disarray, affecting at least 135 flights into and out of the city.

A power outage at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York led to the complete closure of a terminal, throwing airline schedules into chaos.Credit:Bloomberg

Data from Flightradar24’s website showed the Boeing 787 jet making a U-turn about halfway into its nearly 14,000 kilometres journey over the Pacific Ocean, just south of Hawaii.

Terminal 1 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport remained closed Friday while operators worked to restore flight operations.

Air New Zealand said turning back was the best option for flight NZ2.

“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,” it said in a statement.

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

The turnaround echoed a similar incident in January, when an Emirates flight from Dubai to Auckland turned back due to flooding at its destination, treating passengers to a 13-hour flight to nowhere. The closure of Auckland Airport, New Zealand’s biggest, sparked a major operation by Air New Zealand to bring back over 9000 customers trapped overseas.

Still, the passengers from Auckland were not the only ones to experience a travel nightmare on Thursday following the New York outage.

A Korean Air flight bound for New York from Seoul’s Incheon International Airport, KE85, was just off the coast of Alaska before having to turn back.

“The airline recognised that a diversion was inevitable about 5 hours and 30 minutes into the 14-hour flight,” said a spokesperson for the airline.

“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 local time on Friday – after nearly 14 hours in the air.

Bloomberg

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