RE – LGOIMA request — larger aircraft and possible international aircraft movements at Palmerston North Airport, 2020–2025

Thank you for your response concerning my LGOIMA request.

To remove the broader collation exercise and address the specific matter being investigated, I agree to refine the request at this stage.

Please treat the request as follows:

Refined request

For the period 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2025, please provide the information held by Palmerston North Airport Limited concerning every aircraft that:

landed at Palmerston North Airport after arriving directly from a location outside New Zealand; or

was recorded by PNAL as an international arrival, international flight, overseas-origin flight, private international flight, non-scheduled international flight, charter flight arriving from overseas, positioning flight from overseas, or diverted international flight.

For each such aircraft movement, please provide, where held:

a. the date and approximate arrival time;

b. the aircraft type;

c. the aircraft registration or identifying call sign;

d. the overseas airport or location from which the aircraft arrived;

e. the operator, airline, charter company or registered aircraft owner recorded by PNAL;

f. whether passengers or crew disembarked at Palmerston North Airport;

g. the number of passengers and crew, where recorded;

h. whether the arrival was scheduled, chartered, private, diverted, military, diplomatic, medical, freight, positioning or otherwise classified;

i. any record showing that New Zealand Customs, Immigration New Zealand, the Ministry for Primary Industries, Police or another border agency was notified of, approved, attended or processed the arrival;

j. the location at Palmerston North Airport where any passengers, crew, baggage or cargo were processed;

k. any prior permission, approval, operational instruction, handling request, landing request or border-arrival arrangement held by PNAL concerning the flight; and

l. any record showing that the aircraft first landed at another New Zealand airport for border processing before continuing to Palmerston North.

Form of response

A table or spreadsheet generated from PNAL’s existing aircraft movement, landing, billing, airfield or operational records will be sufficient.

I am not requesting PNAL to conduct new research, determine the immigration status of individual passengers, obtain information from third parties, or create information that it does not hold.

Where a requested field is not recorded, please state “not held” for that field rather than excluding the entire aircraft movement.

Please search the records ordinarily used by PNAL to:

record aircraft landings and take-offs;

calculate or issue landing charges;

identify aircraft registrations and operators;

record prior permission requests;

manage private, charter, diverted or non-scheduled flights;

coordinate airfield operations; and

communicate with border agencies.

If PNAL considers that no aircraft arrived directly from outside New Zealand during this period, please provide a clear written confirmation that PNAL’s records disclose no such arrivals.

If records disclose international aircraft arrivals but PNAL holds no corresponding record of border-agency attendance or processing, please state that expressly.

Charges

This refinement removes the request for all large-aircraft movements, pavement information, future operational intentions and general planning material.

Accordingly, please reconsider the previous estimate of 80–160 hours and confirm whether the refined information can be extracted from PNAL’s existing aircraft movement, operational, landing-charge or billing systems without charge.

If PNAL still proposes a charge, please provide before undertaking chargeable work:

a breakdown of the tasks involved;

the estimated time for each task;

the records or systems that must be searched;

the number of potentially responsive aircraft movements identified; and

an explanation of why the relevant movements cannot be identified through an electronic search, report or database query.

This refinement is intended to resolve the substantial-collation concern while preserving the central public-interest question: whether aircraft arrived directly from overseas at Palmerston North Airport and what border-processing arrangements were recorded for those arrivals.

Please confirm that this refined request has been accepted and advise the revised statutory response date.

Ngā mihi,

Tracy