With the trans-Tasman bubble on the way, Auckland Airport has undertaken the unique challenge of splitting one airport into two. Matthew Scott went along to see what the parallel worlds look like.
Birdsong is piped into an empty hallway. A message to nobody plays on the intercom. Luxury stores sit barred and shuttered - the lights are on, but nobody is home.
Once Covid reached our shores, nowhere did business-as-usual grind to a halt faster than Auckland Airport.
A concourse usually teeming with people has been quiet for a year. Unless a flight is departing, the enormous hallways of the departure zone are a ghost town, apart from the odd staff member befitted in PPE.
Staff are excited for the return of the throngs - the chance to go back to how things were before, almost. Accommodating tourists - Kiwi families, in search of the sun.
In some ways, however, it will be completely different.
To keep passengers returning from Australia and outside the bubble safely separated, Auckland Airport has divided arrivals into two self-contained terminals.
“It’s literally two entirely separate terminals with almost identical processes happening in both,” airport general manager of operations Anna Cassels-Brown said.
Two different airports
There will be a different mood in the air for each of the two arms.
The so-called ‘green zone’ will soon be full of Kiwis and Aussies just finishing or setting out on their first international holiday in over a year.
On the other side will be New Zealanders returning home after time abroad in more Covid-stricken parts of the world, anticipating two weeks in managed isolation.
Between them, no man’s land - hundreds of metres of empty hallway as a buffer.
Cassels-Brown says the staff take the separation seriously. “It’s like entering a construction site,” she said. “You have to have the right equipment if you want to go through the door.”
While holidaymakers in the green zone will come into the country via Duty Free and the usual arrivals door, passengers on the way to MIQ facilities will have a uniquely truncated journey through the airport.
Passengers will go through a health check and a verification of their pre-departure Covid test. On flights of 40 or more, baggage will go separately ahead to the two-week destination to speed things up and stop unnecessary socialising around the carousel.
“You’ll notice it’s not as spacious on this side,” Cassels-Brown said. “That discourages too much congregation.”
After passing through immigration and security, passengers will find buses waiting to either take them to their local MIQ facility or to get them to a chartered plane to facilities further afield in Christchurch or Wellington.
“Sometimes people are upset about that,” a member of staff said. “Especially if they live in Auckland. But on the whole, people are so happy to be back, everything runs quite smoothly.”
Start your engines
Out on the runway, Air New Zealand jets sit in waiting. Some of them have their doors taped up and covers over the windshield and wheels. They’ve been “winterised”, says Cassels-Brown, for lack of a better term.
The same could be said for the airport itself - it's a car that has been out in the cold all winter. It’s going to take a lot to get the engine running.
The split itself has taken immense logistical planning, and staff have had their hands full testing that the new arrivals process works.
Thursday was a long day spent on a stress test.
The operational split has been on the cards since last July, when the idea of trans-Tasman and trans-Pacific bubbles were first seriously considered.
So on the Monday morning when the first planes land from Australia, it will be the culmination of almost a year’s planning.
The cost of it all has been borne by the airport company, which hope to recoup its losses once more New Zealanders are in and out on a daily basis.
Retailers who put stores in hibernation more than a year ago are coming back - sometimes tentatively. Because although the departures zone feels like an empty shopping mall right now, restarting isn’t as simple as just flipping around the closed sign.
Re-staffing means arranging airside security passes for every new hire, and restocking means bringing every last product through security.
Retailers want to be sure there will be custom before they do all of that.
There’s under two weeks to go before the bubble with Australia, but the airport - or airports - are ready.
