A flight to Brisbane circled off the coast before being diverted back to Wellington Airport.
A flight to Brisbane circled off the coast before being diverted back to Wellington Airport.
An air traffic control “technical fault” caused disruptions to air sector services tonight, closing Oceania airspace and forcing transtasman flights to circle off the New Zealand coast.
Several high-level investigations are now under way into the outage, with Airways NZ apologising to affected passengers.
Several flights headed forAustralia circled in a holding pattern after the outage hit. Some flights have been cancelled and others delayed.
Flight tracking website Flight Radar 24 showed four Australia-bound flights in holding patterns.
A Kiwi passenger on a delayed flight from Australia was told “technical issues” were to blame.
In a statement to the Herald, the Civil Aviation Authority confirmed a “technical fault” this afternoon in the main Operational Control System (OCS) platform had “temporarily disrupted air traffic services across several sectors”.
“The issue has since been resolved, and Oceania airspace is now open.
“The Civil Aviation Authority continues to monitor the situation closely.
“In line with our safety oversight responsibilities, we will be following up with Airways New Zealand regarding the cause of the outage as part of our normal regulatory activities. Further updates will be provided if required.”
A flight to Brisbane circled off the coast before being diverted back to Wellington Airport.
Jetstar confirmed the disruption was caused by an air traffic control outage.
“Two Jetstar flights, one from Christchurch and one from Dunedin, have returned to refuel but are set to re-depart shortly.”
In a statement on its website, Airways NZ chief executive James Young said Airways experienced a disruption to its main oceanic air traffic control system, “which temporarily disrupted air traffic services operating across the Tasman”.
The oceanic air traffic control system is used by Airways to manage aircraft flying to and from New Zealand across the oceanic airspace.
“At 4.30pm, the main oceanic air traffic control system experienced an outage and operations were switched to a back-up system. During this time, flight plans for the Tasman sector were unable to be processed through the system, causing delays,” Young said.
“As a result of this, five flights were held in the air, three of which were diverted back to New Zealand after holding for around 40 minutes, with the remaining two flights proceeding to their destination after holding. Flights were also held on the ground in both Australia and New Zealand during this time.”
Young said the main system was restored at 5.05pm with normal operations resuming by 5.30pm
“A full technical review is now under way. Our main priority is the safety of the travelling public and we apologise to all customers and their passengers who were affected.”
Taylor said it was uncertain whether the flight, which was due to depart at 6.55pm, would go ahead as scheduled or be cancelled.
“I don’t even think it’s left Christchurch yet,” he said.
“It says check-in is open, but you can’t actually check in.
“I just wish I took my Air New Zealand flight yesterday like I had planned.
“I actually said to my wife, ‘We’ve never had an issue with Jetstar before, and this is the first time’ – although it doesn’t sound like it is Jetstar’s issue.”
