Passengers on an Air New Zealand flight from Christchurch to Invercargill have had a frightening experience on Saturday.
Their Dash 8 aircraft was forced to circle over Foveaux Strait seven or eight times while they were told three technical difficulties were addressed.
Emergency services were on standby as the plane landed two hours later than expected.
What should have been a simple Saturday afternoon flight from Christchurch to Invercargill turned into anything but.
At around 2:30pm, authorities were on standby for an emergency landing.
Marion Walton was among those on board.
"When they told us the steering had broken we all just lost it - it's like 'oh my god how bad could it have gone?'" she told Newshub.
"One of the girls across the aisle said she smelt the petrol when they dumped it so that was very interesting."
Issues with the landing gear were identified mid-air - forcing crew to circle about eight times around Invercargill and Bluff.
In a statement to Newshub, Air New Zealand head of flight operations, Hugh Pearce, confirmed a landing gear fault had been detected.
"The pilot made the decision to delay the landing to complete the necessary checks before carrying out a safe landing at Invercargill," he said.
"The pilot notified air traffic control in accordance with standard operating procedures which resulted in a local standby at the airport."
The first attempt to make a safe landing failed.
"They had all the emergency services there. We got about 10m off the ground and they pulled back up again - and all our hearts were sinking," Walton said.
"Everyone had a bit of a teary moment a few times."
Once the plane eventually touched down around 3pm the experience wasn't over yet.
Passengers were stuck on board - needing to be towed back to the terminal.
"That whole process took another hour. We knew we weren't going to die, and that's when people started to chat and bond and talk to each other," Walters said.
Passengers were said to be complimentary of the crew on board - giving them a round of applause on landing.
However there are many lingering questions on why things went so wrong.
"There were three technical issues in one flight - one hour-and-a-half flight whatever it's supposed to have been. Pretty disappointing show for Air New Zealand," Walton said.
A lucky end to an unfortunate afternoon - which could've ended up very differently.
"It was probably just before we got to the terminal I got myself a Lotto ticket - I used the flight numbers as my lucky numbers," Walton said.
