Plane forced to return due to smoke

Photo / File

A plane carrying almost 50 passengers had to return to Auckland shortly after take-off when smoky haze was spotted in the cockpit.

The Mount Cook Airline flight to New Plymouth was abruptly aborted last Friday.

One aviation monitoring website reported "a lot of smoke" in the cabin, but Air New Zealand refuted this.

"Engineers found there was no fault with the aircraft," an airline spokeswoman said. "The air conditioning system was the source of the haze, when it was inadvertently switched to the highest setting."

Air New Zealand said 42 passengers were on the flight, NZ5231. The plane returned to Auckland 16 minutes after take-off "due to a very light haze being detected in the cabin," spokeswoman Emma Field said.

"With no evidence of fire, smoke or any other requirement for urgency, customers were disembarked as per usual procedure and re-accommodated on alternate services," Field added.

The airline said Auckland Airport contacted emergency services purely as a precautionary measure.

The plane was an ATR 72-500 turbo-prop aircraft which seats up to 68 passengers. French-Italian firm Aerei da Trasporto Regionale makes the aircraft. The airline said it had eleven such planes in its fleet.

Mount Cook Airline is a subsidiary of Air New Zealand. Its headquarters are at Christchurch Airport. Mount Cook Airline said it had 500 flights per week and carried over 1.8 million passengers annually.