As winter falls, the figures are in for the 2025-26 summer season (December to February), revealing another busy summer for biosecurity officers patrolling New Zealand’s international airports.

Passenger volumes exceeded last summer’s levels, reaching higher than pre-pandemic levels for some airports. Despite this increase, biosecurity processing ran smoothly with improvements such as the continued use of express risk assessment lanes in Auckland, additional officers, and expanded detector dog teams, ensuring a positive arrival experience for travellers while continuing to protect New Zealand’s borders.

Summer number for 2025-26:

• Air passenger arrivals: 2.05m
• Airport with highest number of arrivals: Auckland with 1.47m
• Passengers with seized goods (declared): 15.6k
• Passengers with seized goods (undeclared): 3.4k
• Passengers fined: 2767
• Passengers warned 296
• Busiest day nationwide: 21 December with 27,849 arrivals