There isn’t any. Honest.
My wife and I are on holiday in New Zealand and earlier today we took a domestic flight from Wellington to Nelson. It was a short commuter hop — 30 minutes, across the strait separating the North and South Islands. On the whole an utterly unremarkable experience, just like any number of flights we’ve taken before.
Save for one thing — no security. We arrived for the flights with our e-tickets in hand, scanned them at a kiosk, dropped our bags off on the conveyor and walked to the gate. No ID check; no metal detector; no X-ray of our carry on bags. Probably no X-ray of the checked luggage but we couldn’t tell for sure. We scanned our boarding passes again at the gate, but no ID check. Nothing. In short, it felt like something from before 9/11 — and possibly even before the 1980s and the advent of hijacking.
It was so remarkable precisely because it was so unusual. But as I sat thinking about it, I realized that it really was the reflection of a wise policy. Had we been boarding for an international flight, we’d have gotten the whole 9 yards — ID, bag check, metal detector etc. But New Zealand has made the risk assessment that their inter-island domestic flights are not realistic targets. Though in theory just as vulnerable as any other flight, there simply isn’t a real threat of attack on that particular target.
And so they don’t waste time and money protecting something that doesn’t need protecting. It’s comforting to see that kind of rationality in the world — even if we had to come all the way to New Zealand to see it.
