Air NZ's domestic vaccination policy hits the mark, experts say

Air New Zealand’s new vaccination policy for domestic flights strikes the right balance of being inclusive while also reducing the risk of Covid-19 spreading in-flight and to other parts of the country, experts say. The national carrier on Tuesday said that from mid-December customers would be required to show proof of either full vaccination against Covid-19 or a negative pre-departure test before checking into a domestic flight. The policy applies to all passengers aged 12 or older travelling on a domestic Air New Zealand flight and follows earlier moves from the airline to mandate Covid-19 vaccination for most of its staff as well as international travellers. Duncan Cotterill health and safety expert and partner Olivia Lund said it made sense for Air New Zealand to implement the policy because under the Health and Safety at Work Act it had an obligation to keep people safe. Its new vaccination and testing programme would achieve that, she said. The policy was more inclusive than many other companies had been introducing, in that it allowed unvaccinated people to continue to fly, she said. “They are trying to balance the interests of both unvaccinated persons and vaccinated persons.” Being a monopoly service provider in some regions might have been a driver behind that decision-making, she said. Air New Zealand was operating in a high risk space and could probably have justified restricting travel to vaccinated travellers but by allowing a negative test component it was being more inclusive, she said.<br/>