ATLANTA >> Passengers boarding a trans-Pacific flight from Auckland to New York on Thursday evening had no idea of the rude awakening that awaited them: a 16-hour ordeal that saw them back at square one.

Air New Zealand Ltd. Flight NZ2 should have touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport at 5:40 p.m. local time, but a power outage threw operations into disarray, affecting at least 135 flights.

Data from Flightradar24’s website showed the Boeing 787 jet making a U-turn about halfway into its nearly 9,000-mile journey over the Pacific Ocean, just south of Hawaii.

“Due to an electrical fire in Terminal 1 at JFK Airport and the terminal’s subsequent closure, NZ2 Auckland to New York was forced to divert back to Auckland,” Air New Zealand said. “Diverting to another U.S. port would have meant the aircraft would remain on the ground for several days, impacting a number of other scheduled services.”

— Bloomberg