Auckland's Sky Tower has been lit up in the colours of the German flag tonight as the last Lufthansa plane took off to take German travellers home.
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The Lufthansa A380 departed from Auckland for Frankfurt at 6.30pm tonight, the New Zealand German Chamber of Commerce said in a statement.
"By end of today we will have moved 8500 stranded Germans back to their homeland," the German-New Zealand Chamber of Commerce confirmed in a statement.
Two flights are expected to depart New Zealand yesterday, including one from Christchurch, bringing the final total of Germans returning home from the country to 9300.