Air New Zealand unreservedly apologises to the 227 passengers who have been caught in an engineering related rolling delay to their flight between Honolulu and Auckland since Sunday night (NZ time).

Nearly half the customers affected by delays to NZ9 from Honolulu will arrive in Auckland this evening.

General Manager Customer Experience, Carrie Hurihanganui, says, "Due to the lengthy nature of this disruption, the difficulty we've experienced in adequately communicating with customers and the fact we have repeatedly let them down, we have made the decision that in addition to our unreserved apology we will also be compensating each customer $1,000 in either cash or Airpoints Dollars.

"Due to an unfortunate combination of events this group of passengers has travelled to Honolulu Airport on three occasions expecting to fly, however, on each occasion the aircraft has been unable to depart because of a series of evolving engineering issues.

"A part was required and we attempted to source a replacement within the US, however, despite assurances, the right part was not supplied. Fortunately, as a backup, we also loaded the part onto NZ10 from our Auckland Technical Operations base this morning and this will arrive in Honolulu this evening."

Once the part is received it will be fitted as a priority and the original flight, renamed NZ6889, is now scheduled to depart at 0730 tomorrow morning Honolulu time."

Mrs Hurihanganui says, "We are incredibly sorry to have let our customers down and will conduct a full review to see how we could have managed this disruption better."

Ends

Issued by Air New Zealand Public Affairs ph +64 21 747 320

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