Air NZ flight to Shanghai turned back after landing permission blunder

A nearly full Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to Shanghai had to turn back midway on Sunday morning after the aircraft was found to be lacking the required permission to land in China's mainland.

Due to the airline's "improper temporary deployment of its aircraft," the Boeing 787-9, operating as Flight NZ289, turned back about 5 hours after taking off from Auckland airport around midnight on Saturday local time, the airline said in a statement on Sunday.

The flight was scheduled to land at Pudong International Airport at 7:05am Beijing time, or around noon local time, but touched down at Auckland airport 10am on Sunday.

With about 300 seats, the plane was nearly packed due to the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, which ended on Sunday.

The carrier deployed another Boeing 787-9 to get the stranded passengers to Shanghai. The new flight took off around 11:30pm local time and is due to land at Pudong airport before 6am Beijing time on Monday.

"We are very sorry for the disruption to our customers’ travel plans, particularly during Chinese New Year, as a result of the turnaround of NZ289 from Auckland to Shanghai," the airline said in a statement released on Sunday.

It said the aircraft returned to base after it was discovered that the particular aircraft operating the service did not have a permit to land in China.

As an apology gesture, all passengers were given vouchers for food and drinks as well as NZ$200 each (US$135) to spend on shopping at the airport, the carrier announced. It also assigned staff, including those who speak Mandarin, to escort passengers at the airport.

Most of the passengers spent the day at hotels with a small number remaining at the airport, according to the airline.

The B787-9, a slightly larger version of the Dreamliner, with the registration ZK-NZQ, has been flying with the airline for five months, but has never landed in the Chinese mainland, according to its flying records.

According to China's civil aviation regulation, foreign carriers are required to submit a list of the type, nationality and registration mark of aircraft scheduled to land in the Chinese mainland to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) before operating a flight.

"Midway through our flight from Auckland to Shanghai, the pilot informs us that Chinese authorities had not given this plane permission to land, so we needed to turn around," Eric Hundman, an assistant professor at New York University Shanghai who was returning to Shanghai on NZ289, said in a tweet.

A CAAC official told Shanghai Daily that they had no immediate plans to release a statement about the incident.