Wellington, New Zealand is considered to be the windiest city on the planet. This is good for the local wind turbines and dramatic hair-blowing photoshoots, but not so great for passengers aboard planes landing at Wellington International Airport. On days when a gale is blowing, aircraft tilt and sway as they descend to the runway, occasionally having to abort the landing at the last moment.
In May 2016, an Air New Zealand flight experienced “massive lifts and drops, ups and downs, with a lot of banging and crashing and lots of squealing,” passenger Carl-Ann Herbert told the New Zealand Herald. It was a similar story a few months earlier, when another Air New Zealand flight, according to passenger Eleni Kanelos, "moved side to side, then it just dropped and there were a few screams."
The video above shows some of the more hairy descents at Wellington airport, including two in which the pilots had to abandon their landing plans at the last second and head back into the sky for another go-around.
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