After spending 16 hours in the sky, Air New Zealand's New York flight lands back in Auckland

Passengers who took an Air New Zealand flight to New York City on Thursday (February 16) were shocked when the plane, after spending 16 hours in the air, landed back in Auckland, right where they started.

What happened: Flight NZ2 departed from Auckland on Thursday evening, but diverted back to Auckland around eight hours into the flight. It meant passengers spent over 16 hours on board the plane only to end up back where they started, reported Flightradar24.

But, why? Some passengers thought that there might be a glitch with the flight, but they later found out that the plane had to make a U-turn because of a power outage at the John F Kennedy Airport in New York City.

• The airport said that an electrical panel failure caused the power outage as well as a "small isolated fire" that was put out immediately.
• "A power outage at JFK Terminal 1 is impacting the terminal's ability to accept inbound and outbound flights," the airport's Twitter account posted. "We are working to accommodate impacted flights using other terminals. Travelers, please check flight status with your airline before heading to the airport," the tweet read.

Air New Zealand's response: Air New Zealand said in a statement that the Auckland-New York flight "was forced to divert back to Auckland" due to the fire and terminal closure.

• The airline said that landing at another airport in the United States would have been too disruptive for the carrier's operations.

Second such incident in less than a month: This 16-hour flight to nowhere was not the first such incident in recent times. Just a few weeks back, an Emirates flight from Dubai to Auckland had to turn back halfway through its 14,200-km journey.

• Passengers were left stunned after flying for 13 hours and landing at the same airport where they had taken off. The flight was unable to land in New Zealand as Auckland airport had to close down because of severe flooding.