Air New Zealand passengers have been stranded in Honolulu by a technical problem – reportedly an issue affecting windscreen heating on the flight deck – that grounded one of the airline’s planes.
Windows must be heated at high altitudes or they can ice up. It was the third Air NZ flight to be hit with a technical issue in as many days.
According to the New Zealand Herald, the plane affected is one of the B777-200s the airline is leasing from Boeing while some of its B787 Dreamliners are out of service with engine problems.
The global issue affecting some of the Rolls-Royce engines that power Air New Zealand’s B787-9 Dreamliner fleet will continue to affect the airline’s services until at least this October, the airline stated earlier this year. The problem has meant that some Dreamliners have been temporarily replaced by older B777-200s.
Rolls-Royce has admitted that fixing the cracks and other problems affecting two of its jet engine types will cost more than GBP 1 billion (AUD 1.74 billion) over the next three years, news that saw the engine maker’s half-year results slump to a loss earlier this month.
The NZ Herald spoke to Air NZ passengers stranded in Hawaii who said they woke to find the airline had re-booked them on a flight to Sydney “and we had about half an hour before check-in closed; of course the accommodation we did manage to find was too far away to get there in time”.
One passenger said: “They’ve turned an eight-and-a-half-hour flight into a 16-hour flight. I could have been to England in that time.”
(The flight to Honolulu is indeed eight and a half hours from Auckland. From Sydney it takes an hour longer.)
The NZ Herald reported that other Air New Zealand flights had faced similar problems in the preceding three days.
Air NZ flight NZ101, Auckland to Sydney, turned back to Auckland Airport after the same technical issue concerning windscreen heating. That’s operated by a B777-200 and very occasionally by a B787-9, according to FlightAware. The B777-200 is a separate plane to the one on the Honolulu run.
A day later, on Sunday night, another Air NZ service, flight NZ80, returned to Hong Kong not long after takeoff, reportedly “a precautionary measure due to fault with one of the hydraulic systems onboard”. That flight is also operated with a B777-200, FlightAware says.
The aircraft dumped a full load of fuel before returning to Hong Kong and landed without incident.
Written by Peter Needham in Honolulu
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