Plane passengers stuck on flight for 13 HOURS - only to end up back where they began

Passengers spent 13 hours on a flight to nowhere before their pilot brought them back on the tarmac of the airport they departed from.

An Emirates flight that was due to travel 9,000 miles from New Zealand to Dubai on Friday barely left its departure country's airspace before coming back down at Auckland Airport.

It came as the major city was battered with heavy rains and the airport was forced to shutter due to mass flooding.

In a single day, the port city was drenched in a whole summer's-worth of rain and killing four Aucklanders.

Safety concerns were raised and officials cancelled all international and domestic flights from the city.

Another batch of hopeful holidaymakers, from Texas in the US, also spent 10 hours in the sky before circling back.

The Auckland Airport was flooded (CNN)

Passengers were seen wading through water in the departure lounge (CNN)

And back on the ground the situation was just as dire, with over 2,000 travellers stranded overnight in Auckland's flooded airport.

Images and footage from the transit hub showed people wading through calf-high water in the departure lounge.

Officials apologised to passengers, saying it had been a "really long and challenging night".

At least 5,000 homes and businesses were being checked for flood and landslide damage. Emergency officials said some 200 buildings were assessed as too unsafe to enter.

Thousands of homes were deemed too unsafe to enter after the historic rains (CNN)

Another group of passengers from Dallas spent 10 hours in the air before returning to Auckland (CNN)

The state of emergency initially declared last week has now been rolled back after an additional night of horror storms didn't turn out to be as bad as expected.

The Northland region lifted a state of emergency, and Auckland lifted its heavy rain warning this morning. The country's largest city kept the state of emergency as a precaution after the last week of horror weather.

Weather forecasters had predicted another night of heavy rain.

Ron Devlin, the regional manager for Fire and Emergency New Zealand, told reporters that crews had dealt with more than 50 weather-related callouts Wednesday morning in and around Auckland.

Northland lifted a state of emergency today after a storm turned out to be less severe than originally thought (CNN)

"But I want to stress the rain didn't reach the point that was predicted, which is a great thing, and so we're quite comfortable with the amount of events that we're attending," Devlin said. "This is business as usual for fire and emergency."

Northland, located north of Auckland, had declared the emergency Tuesday in anticipation of a deluge, a move that gives authorities extra powers.

"As it eventuated, these powers were not required and there is no need for the emergency declaration to continue," said Graeme MacDonald, the group controller for Northland Civil Defense Emergency Management.

Rather than flying the 9,000 miles from Auckland to Dubai, an Emirates flight circled the skies and landed back on the tarmac it set out from (SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

In Auckland, officials had earlier closed schools for the week and asked people to work from home if possible as the cleanup continued.

Resident Cassie Clark examined flood damage to one Auckland home Tuesday, saying everything was destroyed.

"The beds, the linen, the clothes, the couches, everything inside is ruined. The actual walls are damaged, it's all soft now, it's not going to hold," Clark told Television New Zealand.

"Everything that this family has had over the last 10 years has been taken away from them in a split second."