• 

  Air New Zealand

  IATA/ICAO Code:

  NZ/ANZ

  Airline Type:

  Full Service Carrier

  Hub(s):

  Auckland Airport, Christchurch Airport, Wellington Airport

  Year Founded:

  1965

  Alliance:

  Star Alliance

  CEO:

  Greg Foran

  Country:

  New Zealand

  Region:

  Oceania

On Friday, passengers flying over the Pacific Ocean awoke in panic as oxygen masks suddenly dropped from the overhead bins. The Air New Zealand plane was on an overnight flight from Los Angeles to Auckland when the masks appeared, and the cabin loudspeakers declared an emergency.

False or not, the panic was real

The incident occurred on Air New Zealand flight NZ5, operated by a ten-year-old Boeing B777, registration ZK-OKQ. The B777-319(ER) departed Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) at 22:07 on Wednesday, August 17, for the twelve-hour flight, although it landed 40 minutes early, arriving at Auckland Airport (AKL) at 05:05 on Friday.

The New Zealand Herald reported that one of the passengers, Morgan Kelly said it was in the middle of the night when the cabin lights blinked. She told The Herald that the oxygen masks fell from overhead, and a loudspeaker began blaring, "This is an emergency, this is an emergency, put your mask on."

Another passenger, Jakob Carter, told 1News that everything had been going smoothly until they hit some turbulence over Rarotonga [Cook Islands] in the early hours of the morning. He told the 1news channel:

"We hit some turbulence, it wasn't that bad, but suddenly the lights went out, oxygen masks dropped down..people started freaking out, it was quite scary."

He said passengers were confused and worried and kept their masks on for about 20 to 25 minutes. Around then, the captain said over the loudspeaker there was nothing wrong with the aircraft and people could remove their masks. Somewhat contradicting that, an Air New Zealand spokesperson told The Herald there had been an incident on the flight, adding that the captain and inflight services manager had kept passengers informed with an announcement about two minutes after the masks were deployed. "We are also in the process of getting in touch with customers on the flight to apologize for the disruption," she added.

Avoiding turbulence was the culprit

Captain David Morgan is the airline's chief operational integrity and safety officer and a current 787 pilot. In a statement, he said oxygen masks were automatically deployed as the aircraft descended from 34,000 feet (10,360 meters) to 27,000 feet (8,230 meters) to avoid turbulence. "During this descent, an automated emergency warning activated requesting customers put on their oxygen masks."

"We are sorry for the alarming wake-up call on this flight. This was not an emergency situation and the oxygen masks were not required. While our cabin crew and pilots worked quickly to reassure everyone on board, we know it was distressing for our customers."

Discover more aviation news here!

As with most of Air New Zealand's B777 fleet, this aircraft spent nearly two years grounded due to the pandemic. According to Flightradar24.com, its last commercial flight before grounding was on June 30, 2020, when it operated flight NZ124 from Melbourne Airport (MEL) to Auckland.

It then sat idle until re-entering service on February 8, 2022, picking up where it left off with an Auckland to Melbourne service. The first international return was on February 14, when ZK-OKQ operated NZ1010, a flight from Auckland to Los Angeles via Christchurch (CHC). Since then, it has flown a steady stream of international flights to Australia and the West Coast.

False alarm or not, this must have been scary for the passengers. Have any of our readers experienced anything similar?

Sources: NZ Herald, 1news.co.nz