Flights have resumed at Wellington Airport as the fog that covered the airport has lifted.
Fog shrouded Wellington Airport this morning, delaying flights. Photo: RNZ / Laura Dooney
Since last night dozens of flights, both domestic and international, were delayed, cancelled or diverted due to low fog, which blanketed most of the city this morning.
At Wellington Airport this morning some people had been waiting as long as 24 hours for their flight but travellers remained in good spirits.
Saki Vatulawa, from Wellington, was trying to get to Melbourne to meet his partner there. His flight was supposed to leave at 6.40am this morning, but now he won't be able to leave until tomorrow, as the rest of today's flights were booked.
"I can't do anything about it ...I'm going to have to come back tomorrow ...hopefully it's solved tomorrow."
But the fog delay cost one woman and her friend much frustration, and $500 each.
Ruth Bromley is supposed to be in Sydney, where the cruise they had booked departs tomorrow morning.
But their flight from Wellington to Auckland was delayed early this morning, and still hadn't left at 1pm today.
Ms Bromley said they missed their flight to Sydney, and the only seats available on another flight were premium economy. They did manage to get a discount on the Air New Zealand seats, said Ms Bromley, and she understood the disruption was not the airline's fault.
Auckland man Chris Sandes has been waiting for a flight to get home for about 24 hours.
He and his colleagues came to Wellington for work on Friday, and should have been on a flight home yesterday evening.
"The flight was cancelled so back to the hotel, rebooked our flights for the morning, stayed another night and got in the taxi about a quarter to six this morning and just arrived and cancelled again, so now we've been shifted I think it's 11:30am we get on the plane so hopefully the fog has gone by then and we're out of here, home."
Chantelle Gerrard is philosophical about the delay at Wellington Airport caused by fog. Photo: RNZ / Laura Dooney
Heather Clegg and her family were expecting to be at the airport for a while as they waited for their flight to Dunedin.
The Wellington family sat and played cards at the airport, keeping an eye on the fog out the window.
"We're not that confident that we'll be leaving at 10am, we think we might be here for quite a few hours," Ms Clegg said.
Chantelle Gerrard had been waiting to get on a flight since yesterday afternoon, but said Air New Zealand had been great at looking after customers who were trapped in by the fog, paying for her taxi and hotel for the night.
Other people, particularly those with connecting flights from Auckland to overseas, were the people Ms Gerrard said she felt sorry for.
She said there was no point in getting angry about the delays.
"Weather is weather."
No flights seem to be able to land into #Wellington #NewZealand at the moment due to #fog. This @FlyAirNZ flight NZ433 ended up aborting landing and headed back to #Auckland pic.twitter.com/fe8MsPwe7u
— Mark Gee (@theartofnight) February 10, 2018
