Passengers took a 16-hour flight to nowhere after their plane to New York U-turned because of an electrical fire at JFK Airport

• A flight to New York headed back to New Zealand because of an electrical fire at JFK Airport.
• Passengers spent 16 hours on the plane only to return to the airport where they took off.
• An electrical failure in the terminal caused an outage and a "small isolated fire," per JFK Airport.

Passengers spent 16 hours on a plane only to return to their departure point because of a fire at the destination airport.

An Air New Zealand flight bound for New York on Thursday was forced to make a U-turn and head back to Auckland Airport in New Zealand because of an electrical fire in Terminal 1 at JFK Airport, an airline spokesperson told Insider.