Still licking their wounds after losing the Super Rugby final in Hamilton on Saturday night, the Brumbies spent more than two hours on the runway before they were offloaded and billeted in an airport hotel.

Meanwhile, an aircraft full of supporters touched down in the capital on Sunday afternoon, the first commercial international flight into the new Canberra Airport.

Brumbies players and staff will move out of their Griffith headquarters over the next two weeks and into a temporary home in Bruce.

The aircraft's mechanical problems will also delay the arrival of the 12 Brumbies who will join Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie's first squad.

They were expected to show up for Test duties on Monday, but the contingent was hoping to be granted extra time to recover and join the camp in Sydney on Tuesday.

They were scheduled to arrive in Canberra at 8.05pm on Sunday. The flight back to Sydney, and then on to Canberra, was supposed to be the last leg of a journey that has taken them more than 30,000 kilometres, to three countries and through four time zones in the past four weeks.

Instead it was a travelling debacle for the weary players just 24 hours after they lost the final to the Waikato Chiefs 27-22. They will now leave New Zealand at 5.30am, Australian time.

The players remained upbeat. Some joked that their hectic travel schedule - which has taken them to Perth, Canberra, South Africa and New Zealand - could get worse.

The Brumbies were shattered after coming so close to becoming the first team in Super Rugby history to win the title after an intense travel schedule. They led the match against the Chiefs until the last 20 minutes, when the home side took advantage of the exhausted Brumbies. But the Brumbies refused to use their 30,000-kilometre journey as an excuse.

Chiefs players even admitted to their opponents after the match that they did not expect to be in a dogfight until the end, given the Brumbies' path to the final.

The Brumbies were defiant until the very end and have earned respect the club did not have two years ago, when it slumped to the worst performance in its history.

Canberra junior Peter Kimlin will join the Wallabies camp but he will not return to the capital after agreeing to a deal to play in France.

''I'm really gutted [at the loss in the final],'' former Canberra Grammar student Kimlin said.

''The club is going upwards and upwards. Next year, hopefully we can go one better.

''I hope the guys make the final next year and they can win. It hasn't hit me that I'm leaving.''

Wallabies hopeful and Brumbies five-eighth Matt Toomua said: ''We fell at the last hurdle but we think we've got a bright future.''

At Canberra Airport on Sunday afternoon, 156 disappointed Brumbies fans arrived on a chartered flight from Auckland.

A spokeswoman for Canberra Airport said nine customs officers had been brought in from the Canberra district office and the passenger policy section in Canberra to cater for the flight.

Brumbies chief executive Andrew Fagan said the team was aiming to move out of its headquarters soon. The building is due to be demolished by March 15, 2014.

The team will be based at the Australian Institute of Sport in Bruce, with administrators working out of offices nearby, until the Brumbies' new headquarters is finished.

Construction on the new facilities at the University of Canberra is starting now and is due to be finished in March 2014.