Among those on board was Good Samaritan Lucy Knight's son Oscar Thomas, one of 12 Rosmini College students returning from a two-week school trip to France.
The pilot told passengers "a large gust of wind hit the side of the plane when attempting to land in Auckland", Mr Thomas said today.
"We circled back around for a second attempt when the plane started to head upwards at high speed rather than land, while I thought we were going to make a third attempt," he said.
"The destination then changed on the screen to Ohakea Air base, but we were not told for about 10 minutes after why it was necessary."
Mother-of-six Ms Knight, who was left fighting for her life after intervening in a bag snatch attempt in September last year, said she waited from midday yesterday for her son to walk into the international arrivals terminal. Instead, she received a text from him saying he was at the other end of the island, stuck on a plane.
He was tired and bored, she said, and complained of an unpleasant odour on board the plane after someone was sick.
"He was very monotone. He was not happy about it at all."
Crew had explained to passengers they couldn't land because of the storm.
"But he really hasn't talked a lot - he's just so tired," Ms Knight said.
"They're sitting on the plane and waiting and watching Paddington Bear."
Another student from the North Shore boys' school, Connor Penman, 14, said passengers had stayed calm throughout the ordeal, and staff had looked after everyone well.
"After trying to and aborting a landing at a cloudy Auckland airport, we turned around and started flying south. Five minutes later the pilot told us that due to bad weather we had been diverted to Ohakea," he said in an email to the Herald.
Originally passengers were told by the pilot that he did not know how long the delay would continue, but were later told it would be up to six hours as a replacement crew was flown down.
"Many of the passengers started asking for phones to contact family, but otherwise were calm and orderly, if a bit noisy," he said.
"I had contacted my family and was not happy that I had to wait another six hours after the 22 hours of flying that I had just done. My solution to the crisis was to eat a huge bar of chocolate and sleep for five hours. It worked fairly well."
The ordeal was a tiring one, as the teen slept for 13 hours once he finally got home.
"Overall I think that the situation was handled extremely well by the pilot and other staff and although we were not offered any more meals, I was offered drinks and chips multiple times, and my friends managed to get chocolate and coke from one of the kind staff (who were also very helpful in dealing with another Rosmini College student who was sick on himself)," he said.
"We were constantly updated with the newest information and apologised to while in Ohakea."
An engineer was flown down with the replacement crew, he said, and both engines were "turned on one at a time for the engineer to run some tests before takeoff".
In an email to the Herald, another passenger said: "We are stuck on a plane after extreme weather in Auckland the captain aborted the landing of the plane and are now waiting for 6 hours at [Ohakea] near Palmerston North. We have to wait on the plane for six hours."
Hank Trenton said on Facebook he and other passengers could not leave because there were no Customs staff at the airport.
"I also managed to get motion sickness! So far so good!" he added.
Cathay Pacific spokeswoman Pauline Ray said the plane arrived in Auckland at 7.30pm and then flew to Hong Kong at about 10pm.
She said passengers were delayed but had been patient and had not asked for compensation.
"The feedback we've got is passengers were very understanding that it was a weather situation. The air-conditioning was kept on in the plane and the crew looked after them."
The pilot kept passengers updated on the situation and snacks were made available, she said.
Reports the plane had to refuel were inaccurate.
"I don't think it needed to refuel. The main problem was crew hours were up. So we had to fly down a replacement crew," Ms Ray said.
The wild weather didn't impact any other Cathay Pacific flights.
Cathay Pacific chartered an Air New Zealand plane to fly to Ohakea. A new crew flew the plane back to Hong Kong.
-- additional reporting: Lynley Bilby of the Herald on Sunday
