For the second time in a week, international partners have rescued Jacinda Ardern’s mission to Antarctica after the New Zealand Defence Force plane broke down leaving the frozen continent.

Prime Minister Ardern was due to fly home on Friday night after a visit to New Zealand’s research facilities, but the NZDF Hercules failed to takeoff from the icy runway.

Delays due to faulty planes are nothing new for leaders from New Zealand, which boasts a long and embarrassing history of overseas breakdowns.

Thankfully for Prime Minister Ardern, travelling with her partner Clarke Gayford, the small Kiwi entourage in Antarctica were accommodated on an Italian plane heading back to Christchurch, which left around 11am NZDT.

The episode comes after Prime Minister Ardern was forced to take a ride on an American plane to Antarctica.

An effort to fly on an NZDF Hercules was abandoned two hours into the eight hour journey due to deteriorating weather at McMurdo Sound.

Instead, she was offered a ride south on a US Boeing C17, a bigger and faster plane, a day later, while the Hercules successfully made it later.

The USA’s McMurdo Station, New Zealand’s Scott Base and Italy’s Zucchelli Station are all located in the Ross Dependency, part of New Zealand’s territorial claim to Antarctica.

Prime Minister Ardern took the trip to visit Scott Base on its 65th anniversary.

Her government is funding a $NZ306 million ($277 million) capital redevelopment of facilities there, which she says is a sorely-needed upgrade and the first since the 1980s.

“Many of us will have heard about the research that’s been that’s been conducted here. But to be able to come and see it in person and talk to those who are part of it was something else,” she said.

“Our job though, is to make sure that their research is informing our decision-making because all of this work is in vain if we don’t listen to what the science is telling us.

“It’s telling us that this place is changing and that we have a hand in that.”

This week’s flight mishaps are part of a long-running pattern of failed NZDF flights.

Unlike Australia, New Zealand’s PM does not have a specially designated plane.

As such, government leaders work around the NZDF schedule when making overseas trips, utilising their Boeing 757s or Hercules planes.

After visiting the US President Joe Biden in June this year, a 757 broke down, with Ms Ardern flying home commercially as it was fixed in Washington DC.

In August, a Hercules breakdown left Defence Minister Peeni Henare and a 30-strong delegation stuck in the Solomon Islands.

In 2019, Prime Minister Ardern was left stranded in Melbourne by another breakdown, leaving the PM to catch an Air New Zealand flight home.

In the same year a second NZDF plane had to be sent to pick up Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters from Vanuatu due to another breakdown.

Prime Minister John Key was forced to spend a night in Townsville with an 80-strong delegation in 2016, abandoning a Mumbai leg of a trade mission to India after the 757 couldn’t get off the ground on a stopover.

In 2013, a 757 was forced to make a dangerous landing during a whiteout at McMurdo Sound as it did not have enough fuel to return to New Zealand.

Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully, one of 118 on board who endured two aborted landing approaches before touching down on the third, told news outlet Stuff it was “pretty scary” and “not a good situation to be in”.

New Zealand is due to retire its Hercules next year, taking ownership of five C-130J from 2024.

The chief of the Air Force, Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Clark, told TVNZ this month they were looking at replacing the troubled pair of 757s ahead of their scheduled replacement in 2028.

– AAP