Air NZ grounded by Gita
Air New Zealand has cancelled flights in and out of Wellington, Hokitika, Nelson, New Plymouth and Queenstown due to ex-Cyclone Gita.
Flights are still operating into and out of Blenheim, Kapiti Coast and Palmerston North, but the airline is closely monitoring conditions at those locations.
Gita is expected to bring up to 200mm of rainfall, winds up to almost 150 kilometres an hour and offshore waves up to 10 metres to parts of the country hard over the next 12 - 24 hours.
The airline cancelled all services into and out of Wellington from 2.45pm until midnight Tuesday, which may have a flow on effect to other services. By midday, the cancellations for the remainder of Tuesday for the other airports were all in effect.
Air NZ planned to operate additional flights between Auckland and Wellington on Wednesday to accommodate disrupted customers. Those included:
- NZ6141: Auckland – Wellington (Departs 0925) - NZ6142: Wellington – Auckland (Departs 1105) - NZ6143: Auckland – Wellington (Departs 1315) - NZ6144: Wellington – Auckland (Departs 1455)
The airline said customers booked to travel to or from any of the affected airports were advised to consult the arrivals and departures information on its website for up-todate schedule information.
‘‘Customers who are able to make changes to their booking online including changing to another flight within the next two days will be sent notifications to their mobile phones outlining how they can self-manage any changes.
‘‘The contact centre is experiencing extremely high call volumes. If travel is not urgent, there is no need for customers to call the airline immediately.
Customers were advised to subscribe to Air NZ’s Travel Alert service to receive updates.