A plane has travelled nearly 9,000 miles across the world from a tiny island country northeast of Australia to Norwich.

The Nauru Airlines Boeing 737 landed at Norwich Airport at 7.45pm on Thursday having flown 8,737 miles from Nauru. 

It was the latest of the freighter-type Boeing 737-300s from Nauru Airlines to arrive for a base maintenance visit in Norwich.

Eastern Daily Press: VH-ONU Nauru Airlines Boeing 737VH-ONU Nauru Airlines Boeing 737 (Image: Josh Knights)

The VH-ONU aircraft made seven separate journeys over seven days to get to Norfolk.

It flew from Nauru to Brisbane, Brisbane to Darwin, Darwin to Jakarta, Jakarta to Colombo, Colombo to Muscat, Muscat to Larnaca, before its final leg from Larnaca to Norwich.

The journey's flying time took more than 25 hours in total to reach Norwich, where it arrived for maintenance with KLM UK Engineering.

READ MORE: All the places you can fly to from Norwich Airport this year

It is the second Nauru Airlines aircraft to be maintained by KLM UK Engineering, the first being VH-PNI which arrived on September 26 last year and departed on November 17.

Eastern Daily Press: Nauru islandNauru island (Image: Wikimedia)

Nauru fact file

Nauru is the third-smallest country in the world behind Vatican City and Monaco - making it the smallest republic as well as the smallest island nation.

The tiny island country in Micronesia, northeast of Australia, has a population of just 12,511 people - compared to around 144,000 in Norwich.

It was first inhabited by Micronesians at least 3,000 years ago, who were thought to practice aquaculture.

The island is just 8.1 square miles in size.

Since 1907, phosphate has been mined on Nauru, which has made 70pc of the island uninhabitable.

Formerly known as Pleasant Island, Nauru features a coral reef and white-sand beaches and palm trees. Inland, tropical vegetation surrounds the Buada Lagoon.