Passengers on NZ271 were told Oceania airspace was closed. Photo: Flight Radar
The cause of an outage that disrupted several trans-Tasman flights is yet to be confirmed.
Multiple Australia-bound flights were forced into a holding pattern, with some diverted back to New Zealand.
Flight Radar showed at least one Air New Zealand flight to Brisbane had looped back and was in a holding pattern above the capital.
Airways could not confirm the nature of the outage or what caused it, and said such details would be revealed in the investigation.
RNZ contacted the Associate Transport Minister for comment, however a spokesperson said given the IT system outage was an operational matter, Airways was leading the response.
Airways New Zealand chief executive James Young said the organisation's main oceanic air traffic control system experienced a "disruption", which temporarily impacted air traffic services operating across the Tasman.
"New Zealand's oceanic airspace covers a large area across the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea. The oceanic air traffic control system is the system Airways uses to manage aircraft flying to and from New Zealand across this 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.
"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," he said.
The main system was restored at 5.05pm, and normal operations had resumed by 5.30pm, he said.
A full technical review is now underway.
"Our main priority is the safety of the travelling public and we apologise to all customers and their passengers who were affected," he said.
Air New Zealand has been contacted for comment.
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