With weather warnings in place for many parts of the country, Air New Zealand customers are being warned to expect delays or cancellations heading into the long weekend.<\/p>\n
Wellington customers were told tonight there may be disruptions to their flights on Thursday as high winds and heavy rain continue to batter the lower North Island.<\/p>\n
The option to move to an alternative flight has been offered to one traveller who was scheduled to depart from Wellington at 1pm tomorrow.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Air New Zealand told the Herald at this stage only flights to and from Wellington were expected to face potential impacts, but that was subject to change.<\/p>\n
Strong winds are expected throughout Wellington, the Marlborough Sounds, K\u0101piti Coast and Taranaki, with a MetService watch in place until 6pm tomorrow.<\/p>\n
The gusts may reach severe gale-force in exposed parts of the region, with residents being warned of potential damage to trees, powerlines and unsecured structures.<\/p>\n
An orange heavy rain warning is also in place for the eastern ranges of Horowhenua, Manawat\u016b and Taihape and the ranges of the Tararua District and Hawke\u2019s Bay until midnight Thursday.<\/p>\n
The wild winter weather has been moving up the country for the past several days, first impacting the upper South Island before shifting north.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, a state of emergency was declared in Kaik\u014dura, with MetService estimating nearly 200mm of rain had fallen in 24 hours.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of people were evacuated as riverbanks burst, causing widespread flooding, and many roads were closed throughout the region.<\/p>\n
A heavy rain warning remains in place until 6pm Thursday for Marlborough and Canterbury between Ward and Hanmer, and southeast of the Awatere Valley, including the Kaik\u014dura Ranges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With weather warnings in place for many parts of the country, Air New Zealand customers are being warned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[59861,35541,111,43,139,69,1455],"class_list":["post-515700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-airnewzealand","tag-airtravel","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515700","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=515700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}