Live shot gun cartridge found in overhead cabin locker on Air NZ aircraft raises concern about aviation security

A live shotgun cartridge found in an overhead locker on an Air New Zealand plane has highlighted the thousands of passengers illegally attempting to carry ammunition aboard aircraft. On July 10 aircrew checking baggage lockers found a single shot gun cartridge on an Airbus A320 in Auckland at the end of a flight from Christchurch where passengers had been through security screening. The Aviation Security Service (Avsec) was called in to search the aircraft with an explosives' detector dog, but found nothing further. In the past 12 months there have been 3678 instances of Avsec removing live ammunition from bags, despite it being banned from carry-on luggage, and passengers wanting to pack it in checked-in bags must first seek permission from the airline, and hold a gun licence. An Avsec investigation has not determined how the cartridge got onto the aircraft , how long it had been there, or whether it had passed through security screening. Avsec operations group manager Karen Urwin said the most likely scenario was that it was in a hunter’s jacket pocket, and fell out in the overhead locker. “It is possible for a single cartridge to be missed at security screening because of its small size. It is highly unlikely that the single cartridge fell out of a bag with multiple cartridges.” Urwin said passengers on the flight to Auckland would have gone through screening which used X-ray imaging to check carry-on baggage.<br/>