Air NZ offers stranded passengers $1000

An Air New Zealand Boeing 767 lands at Auckland International Airport. Photo / File

Air New Zealand has issued an "unreserved apology" to 227 passengers caught up in a two day delay from Hawaii, and offered $1000 compensation.

A faulty indication system prompted pilots to abort flight NZ09 at takeoff on Sunday NZT. A number of rescheduled departures have since been cancelled after Air NZ failed to repair the faulty system on the Boeing 767-300 aircraft.

Passengers are set to spend a third night in hotels after being again sent away from the airport this afternoon.

Air NZ has tonight issued a formal apology and said it will offer compensation to all those caught in the rolling delay.

"Due to the lengthy nature of this disruption, the difficulty we've experienced in adequately communicating with customers and the fact we have repeatedly let them down, we have made the decision that in addition to our unreserved apology we will also be compensating each customer $1000 in either cash or Airpoints Dollars," general manager of customer experience, Carrie Hurihanganui, said.

"Due to an unfortunate combination of events this group of passengers has travelled to Honolulu Airport on three occasions expecting to fly, however, on each occasion the aircraft has been unable to depart because of a series of evolving engineering issues.

"A part was required and we attempted to source a replacement within the US, however, despite assurances, the right part was not supplied. Fortunately, as a backup, we also loaded the part onto NZ10 from our Auckland Technical Operations base this morning and this will arrive in Honolulu this evening."

The part will be fitted "as a priority", and the flight, now operating as NZ 6889, was scheduled to leave at 7.30am on Tuesday local time [5.30am on Wednesday NZT].

"We are incredibly sorry to have let our customers down and will conduct a full review to see how we could have managed this disruption better," Mrs Hurihanganui said.

Around half of those affected by delays had been transferred to an Hawaiian Airlines flight to Auckland earlier in the afternoon, she said, more than an earlier reported 90 passengers. They will arrive in Auckland tonight.