KEY POINTS:
Hundreds of Qantas passengers were disrupted in New Zealand yesterday as technical faults on four aircraft compounded what the airline said were weather-related problems at Queenstown.
Six flights were cancelled between Auckland and Wellington. Passengers were transferred to other services as the airline tried to retrieve people stranded at Queenstown since Sunday night.
A Qantas spokeswoman in Australia said a domestic flight arrived at Queenstown too late on Sunday to return to Christchurch, because of an airport ban on night movements.
The plane was then stuck in Queenstown on Monday by the weather.
The aircraft was able to leave Queenstown yesterday, but a second one was sent in to help to move a backlog of passengers.
That had a "snowball" effect elsewhere, when technical faults developed in other parts of the airline's New Zealand fleet, leaving grumpy passengers waiting to be rebooked in Auckland and Wellington.
One business traveller said that when her 6.45am flight from Wellington was cancelled, she and her fellow passengers were transferred to an Air New Zealand service.
A return flight from Auckland at 10am is also understood to have been cancelled, and a 4pm departure was postponed until 6.30pm.
The Qantas spokeswoman believed all the cancellations were of flights between Auckland and Wellington, although several to other destinations were also delayed. She said it was "extremely unusual" for so many aircraft to suffer technical faults in one day, but the airline hoped services would return to normal today.
She was unclear what weather conditions had hindered flights at Queenstown on Monday.
Queenstown Airport officials could not be reached last night for comment. However, residents of the alpine town said there was no snow on Monday, so they could only presume that the stranded aircraft was affected by low cloud.
