Those incidents ended harmlessly, but authorities treated each as if the worst were possible – because the cost of being wrong is unthinkable.
Wellington’s response cuts the other way.
The airport appears to have relied on an early judgment that the bomb was a “practice” device, not a live explosive, and kept operations rolling while the Defence Force travelled to the scene. That is a significant departure from the precautionary evacuations seen elsewhere.
It raises a more troubling question: has New Zealand’s aviation security culture drifted back toward convenience after being told, in an international audit, that our protections were already substandard?
The CAA will say risk was low, the device inert, the protocols adequate. That is not enough. Safety rules are written for the moments when frontline staff do not yet know whether an object is harmless.
If there is scope for a manager to wave away an evacuation on the basis of a hunch or an incomplete assessment, the rule is not a rule – it is a suggestion. And suggestions do not keep bombs off planes.
This incident now tests more than Wellington Airport’s judgment. It tests whether the regulator is prepared to stand on the side of maximum safety, even when that means criticising a major airport and accepting disruption as the price of caution. New Zealanders have seen enough reassuring statements after the fact.
The public deserves a full, independent accounting: the written procedures, the decision log, the expert advice, the exact moment when “suspicious item” became “practice bomb”.
If the system worked as intended, the rules would not be good enough. If the system was bent, those who bent it should be held accountable.
In aviation security, the only credible standard is to act as if every device is real – until the people trained to defuse bombs say otherwise.
