Dunedin Airport ‘waiting and seeing’

Dunedin Airport is "waiting and seeing" after New Zealanders were advised to stop non-essential domestic travel within New Zealand at the weekend.

Regardless of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s request to put the brakes on domestic travel amid Covid-19 concerns, the number of people moving through Dunedin Airport was already dramatically down, business development general manager Megan Crawford said.

"We are waiting still to see what our schedules are going to look like going forward," she said.

"Obviously, there is a slowdown of travellers ... as there should be.

"Everything that’s being done is obviously out of our control, but it’s the right thing to be doing, so we’re just waiting and seeing."

She did not have numbers on hand yesterday to quantify the drop in the number of people moving through the airport, but believed it was significant enough that no special measures were required at places such as aviation security.

Staff at the airport were being told to keep at a safe distance from customers, including staying behind the customer services desk, as the airport had taken measures to keep its "team and our customers and the airport community" as safe as possible.

Signs about the appropriate etiquette — including physical distancing — were prominently displayed at the airport. Regular public address announcements to the same effect were also made at the airport.

"We’ve got information everywhere and ... as they go through aviation security I think people will naturally [co-operate] because it’s being drummed into us to make sure that we keep that distance — that will probably be happening because people are already aware of it.

"But the reality is ... the numbers are slowing down. The number of people that you’ll see in the terminal is a lot less than what you would see normally. In terms of social distancing, due to the mere fact that — and I’m sure other airports would be saying [the same] — there just aren’t the people there."

hamish.maclean@odt.co.nz