Air New Zealand to restart services on Tuesday

A loop of the rainfall from midnight to 6pm today shows how the rain has been pushing in across the North Island.

Hikuwai, in Gisborne has received over 300mm of rain during this period. pic.twitter.com/uYQhKUw8gZ

— MetService (@MetService) February 13, 2023

The former tropical cyclone made landfall in Northland, on the top of the North Island, on Sunday night, causing severe winds that brought down trees and power lines.

Meteorologists predicted 200mm of rain could fall on Monday in Auckland and 400mm to the east in Coromandel.

Air New Zealand’s chief customer officer. Leanne Geraghty. said on Monday afternoon, “Rebooking is well underway with around 6,500 customers left to be rebooked as of this morning.

“Customers are currently being rebooked onto the next available service to give them certainty they have a flight booked.

“Because flights are very full, some customers may receive a notification saying they won’t depart for up to 20 days after their original booking.

“We want to assure those customers we now have teams working to get them on an earlier flight – it’s our top priority.

“As we did during the Auckland flooding, we will be adding larger aircraft to routes, working with our star alliance partners, converting cargo flights to passenger flights and adding additional services where possible into the ports where we need them the most.”

The Kiwi flag carrier added it would put on an extra 11 domestic services and upgrade a further six to larger aircraft to alleviate the backlog. A service from New York that diverted to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands will also continue on to New Zealand on Tuesday.

“The airline will continue to monitor weather forecasts as the cyclone moves down the country and will update plans as required,” said the business in a statement.

“Customers who booked through a travel agent or third-party online agent should contact them directly about making changes to their bookings or credit validity.

“The airline’s Travel Alerts page has the most up to date information on operating flights. The airline is focused on managing these impacts for our customer and will not be able to provide specific flight details at this time.”

Air New Zealand previously said affected customers could either hold their fare in credit for 12 months or rebook in the same class of travel between Sunday, 12 February 2023 and Wednesday, 22 February 2023, without fare difference, penalty or service fees.