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Passengers on an Air New Zealand flight from Fiji found themselves being fumigated yesterday after it was discovered that the aircraft's biosecurity clearance had expired.
An Auckland man - who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity - said two Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry officers boarded NZ21 from Nadi at Auckland International Airport yesterday morning.
"All we heard was that this was a MAF requirement. It was like how they used to do things on planes about 20 years ago, but I still thought it was pretty strange," he said.
A bio-security certificate prevents an airline from having to fumigate an aircraft every time it returns here.
The spraying left the man with a sore throat and caused a baby to gag and vomit.
The construction engineer said the MAF officers took about five minutes to fumigate the plane before leaving the passengers to sit in "a thick fog" as they sealed the door shut behind them.
"It was pretty concerning to see that and there were other passengers having to hold their noses and cover their mouths," he said. "It was something akin to a sauna, not the heat but the look of the place and the longer it went on the foggier it became, it was ridiculous.
"Even now I have a real raspy throat so you could imagine what the effect would be on an infant."
Despite the man's protests that the spraying was unusual, he said passengers were still given no good reasons for the fumigation. He said he found out from one of the MAF officers, whom he bumped into while getting his bags, that the aircraft's biosecurity clearance had expired.
"The MAF guys were just doing their job but I think Air New Zealand should offer some kind of apology and get their act together, for God's sake.
"If they want to charge like a first- rate airline then they should behave like one."
Air New Zealand spokeswoman Di Paton said biosecurity certificates on its aircraft did expire "very occasionally". But she said the airline did not consider it had made a mistake in terms of not having its biosecurity clearances before passengers boarded, saying "these kind of things happen".
"In this particular instance it was by one day the biosecurity clearance had expired - a few hours, in fact. It's not really a mistake. It's just happened as a result of other things."
Ms Paton said Air New Zealand had not received any complaints but "would obviously respond to them" if there were any.
"It's not like we don't take this seriously, which is why we had the MAF people come on board."
MAF Biosecurity New Zealand spokeswoman Lesley Patston confirmed there was a "manual spraying" of flight NZ 21 yesterday morning.
"It's unusual but not uncommon that this happens, put it that way," she said. "But we can give assurances that it's still safe in terms of passenger health."
