Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Passengers of the LATAM flight which took a dramatic dive say the company is keeping them in the dark about what happened.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner suddenly lost altitude on a flight from Sydney to Auckland - sending passengers flying around the cabin and injuring 50.
The plane had been scheduled to continue on to Santiago, Chile on Monday night. But that flight was cancelled and instead a replacement plane left on Tuesday evening.
Nervous passengers boarded the flight last night still not knowing what caused the terrifying mid-air nose-dive.
One passenger spoken to before they departed said they'd been given food and accommodation, but no explanation.
"Nobody asked anything, if we were ok, they just said ok lets go to this hotel, pick up your luggage and see you tomorrow."
Another passenger, Bruna, was not impressed with the airline's communication.
"It is very poorly, like very poorly because a lot of people said they were at the hospital and no one told them where to go and there was no one from the airline there."
She said she was "not confident" about boarding the replacement flight. "I mean, it's hard to get on (another) plane for 11 hours."
Robert Stuart was meant to be on the cancelled flight from Auckland to Santiago and was glad he wasn't on the plane from Sydney.
"Yeah I don't think I would have liked that at all, that would have probably put me off flying for a little bit."
Black box should provide answers within a week
Aviation lawyer Mary Schiavo said the Sydney to Auckland flight could have been "catastrophic" and if the cause wasn't identified quickly people would be calling for grounding of other Boeing 787.
The former head of the US National Transportation Board told Morning Report it would take some time to analyse the black box data.
"That black box recording should be very important to show exactly what happened... as soon as they download that black box information they probably will have solved the mystery.
"Within a week, after downloading the data they'll have a pretty good idea of what happened. In 30 days they are supposed to put out what's called a preliminary report."
Schiavo said if the problem was an undetected computer glitch it may see other Dreamliners grounded.
"They lost all instruments on a fully-loaded passenger plane, this is a major issue."
Aviation lawyer on LATAM flight investigation
Regardless it would be a "major" investigtion involving New Zealand, Chile and US authorities as well as the carrier and Boeing.
"Anytime you have an aircraft where the instruments during flight have gone dark, literally failed, and the aircraft was out of the pilot's control, that could have been a catastrophic loss of the aircraft and life."
She said under international treaties LATAM was liable to look after passengers.
Investigation under way
LATAM said in a statement an investigation was underway into the "strong shake".
The Transport Accident Investigation Commission and Civil Aviation Authority said the incident occurred in international airspace and Chile's Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil would lead the investigation.
In a statement Boeing said it was ready to support an investigation if requested and its thoughts were with the passengers and crew.