“One of the worst:” Pilot describes wild weather as Wellington flight from Sydney aborts landing

There was some unexpected in-flight entertainment for passengers onboard a late-night flight from Sydney to Wellington last night.

Flight NZ248 departed Sydney as scheduled at 6.25 pm on Wednesday night, and all was normal until the final stages of approach in Aotearoa’s notoriously windy capital city.

Crew onboard the Airbus A320 made their first attempt at landing at 11:15 pm local time, that was aborted. A second attempt was made around 20 minutes later. That attempt was also aborted before the flight diverted to Auckland, arriving 20 minutes after midnight.

While it’s not uncommon for passengers to speak of wild flights and landings, it’s much less common for such comments to come from the pilot.

The captain onboard NZ248 told passengers the approach was “one of the worst” in their 25 years of flying into Wellington.

A passenger also NZ Herald he had felt as though they were “sea-sick on a boat” as winds thrashed the city during the landing attempt.

“The plane started shaking and you go up and down, you think that’s just standard for Wellington,” he said.

“But then you twist side to side and you think ‘oh, this is rocky’. Suddenly we burst out and reached altitude and at this point, I started to feel a little nauseous.”

A spokesperson for Wellington Airport described the weather conditions at the time as “very windy,” confirming another inbound flight had to divert to Christchurch.

Air New Zealand told Travel Weekly Australia, passengers were given meal vouchers at Auckland Airport.

“Due to high winds in Wellington on Wednesday night, NZ248 from Sydney to Wellington was diverted to Auckland. Our teams were unable to source accommodation due to the aircraft’s arrival time at 12:26am, however, customers were provided with meal vouchers and supplies and were booked on the first available services to Wellington,” a spokesperson said.

Wellington Airport has a reputation for windy conditions, and a search on YouTube will bring up dozens of videos proving exactly why.