{"id":440813,"date":"2026-05-23T00:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T00:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/440813\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T00:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T00:31:08","slug":"air-new-zealand-flight-nz81-auckland-to-hong-kong-diverted-after-medical-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/440813\/","title":{"rendered":"Air New Zealand flight NZ81 Auckland to Hong Kong diverted after medical emergency"},"content":{"rendered":"

NZ81 left Brisbane just after 2pm local time (4pm NZT), arriving in Hong Kong just before 8.30pm local time (12.30am NZT), according to flightradar24.com<\/p>\n

\"AirAir NZ passengers bound for Hong Kong had a long journey yesterday after a medical emergency forced the plane to divert to Brisbane. Image \/ flightradar24.com<\/p>\n

Last week, NZ5145 from Auckland to Tauranga<\/a> returned to Auckland because of lanterns in the airspace.<\/p>\n

The late-night disruption eight days ago was reported to police.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice were called by Air Traffic Control around 9pm with a report that floating lanterns had been released from an unknown location in Tauranga, that were ending up in the flight path\u201d, a police spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice responded to the area where the lanterns were thought to be coming from, however no one was seen and no further lanterns had been released.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Air New Zealand spokeswoman confirmed the flight returned to Auckland because of the lanterns in the airspace.<\/p>\n

She downplayed any safety concerns and said pilots were notified of the lanterns well in advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NZ81 left Brisbane just after 2pm local time (4pm NZT), arriving in Hong Kong just before 8.30pm local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,68,51,85,73,15974,70,679,71,20588,45499,19720,3523,117,111,43,139,69,225054,17097,61,80],"class_list":["post-440813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-air","tag-auckland","tag-australia","tag-diverted","tag-emergency","tag-flight","tag-forced","tag-from","tag-hong","tag-kong","tag-land","tag-medical","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nz81","tag-onboard","tag-to","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}