Frustrated passenger James Ryan described the airport as "madhouse" amidst lengthly wait lines for arriving passengers. Photo / James Ryan
Frustrated passenger James Ryan described the airport as "madhouse" amidst lengthly wait lines for arriving passengers. Photo / James Ryan
Passengers may have the chance to skip Auckland Airport biosecurity queues as part of a new trial kicking off tomorrow in a bid to reduce delays during an expected school holidays rush.
As many as 15,000 flyers are expected to pass through Auckland Airport on Saturday for the start of September’s school holidays. Passengers have been flooding the Herald with complaints about long delays when flying to New Zealand from overseas and calling the experience a “madhouse”.
The bulk of the delays have been in biosecurity queues where government staff check passengers for items posing a risk to New Zealand’s economy and nature - such as certain foods, soil, plants and wooden products.
Biosecurity NZ has said the trial will put low-risk passengers through an express queue. Biosecurity staff will move through passport check queues at immigration to try to identify low-risk passengers, who filled out their NZ Traveller Declaration form online.
These approved passengers will then be able to grab their bags downstairs and exit straight out, only passing by sniffer dogs but not being checked by any other staff, Mike Inglis, Biosecurity New Zealand’s northern regional commissioner, said.
“We believe we’ll be able to take a decent number of passengers out of the queue and directly put them out through the exit past the dogs,” Inglis said.
He said previously all passengers have had to pass through immigration and then collect their baggage before joining queues to be checked by biosecurty staff.
The timing of the trial is hoped to bring relief after scores of airline passengers have been writing into the Herald with complaints about long delays at immigration and biosecurity this month.
The bulk of the complaints have been about the biosecurity queues, with some passengers noting that Australia also checks for biosecurity risks but that Australian airports appear to run smoother.
Travellers have reported elderly passengers fainting, children crying and others being desperate for toilets while waiting in queues.
Inglis told the Herald that New Zealand biosecurity checks were uniquebecause staff here checked every single passenger.
The checks are designed to protect New Zealand’s farming exports that hit a record $57 billion in the year to June, he said.
That included keeping out of New Zealand pests like brown marmorated stink bug and fruit flies, which can attack crops, and foot and mouth disease, which can affect livestock such as cows, sheep and pigs.
“Those diseases and those pests are a direct threat to hardworking farmers and hardworking growers, who underpin our rural communities,” Inglis said.
A beagle sniffer dog works at Auckland International Airport.
He said even when low-risk passengers have been put into express queues sniffer dogs have detected risky items.
Inglis said his team had also introduced a new lane for New Zealand and Australian passport holders only that was working “probably 80 per cent of the time” but was getting bogged down when some flights were delayed.
His team have also increased the number of hours that detector dog teams are operating, bringing on more teams. Last year, 64 new officers started, with 46 based in Auckland.
“We’ve obviously got to train and skill them in, but we’re also going out to market again over the next couple of days to try and bring other external staff in to make sure that we are doing everything we can across the piece,” Inglis said.
September’s school holidays are tipped to be 10 per cent busier higher than the July school holidays, with travel at about 90 per cent of the levels seen in the same school holiday period in 2019.
Auckland Airportsaid it is “pulling out all the stops to make sure everyone has a great travel experience these school holidays”.
“We have increased our front-line customer experience staff by 103 per cent over the past six months, with 30 new staff. Staffing in these roles is now 41 per cent higher than 2019. During the summer period we’ll be bringing in an additional 45 holiday hosts,” a spokeswoman said.
She said her team generally has six people in the arrivals hall during peak periods.
However, Auckland Airport is a system involving airlines and their ground handlers, Customs, and Biosecurity NZ with the flow of passengers being affected by a complex range of factors.
