A temporary replacement plane has caused a delay of 18-hours for Air New Zealand passengers travelling from Sydney to Auckland.
Air New New Zealand leased two Airbus planes from Portuguese company Hi-Fly to help meet demand while its Dreamliners undergo maintenance after engine problems.
Two Dreamliner flights were affected earlier this month after problems with turbine blades in the Rolls Royce engines. A Tokyo-bound flight had to shut its engine down after it was damaged.
Air New Zealand general manager customer experience, Anita Hawthorne, said about 4500 customers have been affected by international flight delays and cancellations over the past week.
However, the replacement plane caused issues on Saturday after an "engineering issue".
"Unfortunately due to curfew requirements at Sydney airport the service was cancelled, which also led to the cancellation of the return service NZ108 from Sydney to Auckland," Air New Zealand told RNZ.
RNZ reports a passenger from Saturday's flight said they had an overnight stay, took a Quantas flight to Melbourne and then took another Air New Zealand flight back to Auckland.
"I guess the issue is really, Hi-Fly is supposed to be picking up the slack after Air New Zealand's mechanical problems and they're having mechanical problems now so that's a bit of an issue," they said.
Yesterday, Air New Zealand released a statement saying some of their international flights would be re-scheduled or cancelled in the next few weeks due to the air craft issues from the Dreamliners.
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