Travelling with Firearm

Had bloody good experience with Air NZ this morning when travelling south with rifle.

Booked extra bag for rifle but couldn’t get through on phone couple weeks ago due to phone over load with the wild weather disruptions they’d had.
Flicked them a message on Facebook instead and they came back to me a day later. Sent them my flight reference, firearms licence details, basic rifle description and weight of case and rifle and amount of ammo I’d be taking in checked baggage. Simple as that, they added note to booking and that was that.

Turned up at airport this morning, got given priority at special assistance desk, whacked a couple “firearm/priority” tags on rifle case and luggage with ammo and straight to oversize luggage desk and that was that.

Just had one of the toolpro cases with a couple padlocks and bolt/ammo packed in box inside luggage. No hold ups at all, all sorted within 5 minutes of arriving. The hard cases are actually on sale at the moment.

https://www.supercheapauto.co.nz/p/t...mm/566671.html

Have heard of a few people having issues in the past but that certainly wasn’t what I found in this case.

They were really good when I flew south for Tahr in June too. We had a pile of crap flying with three children etc and they were very good and helpful.

That's good to hear. Do they insist on having access to inside of the case? i.e. padlock key/codes.

I had the same experience as above, they were great to deal with! No they didn’t ask for keys to the gun case etc.

No questions asked about keys. As long as ammo isn’t loose in bag and case locked. They’re all good. Run it through X-ray and check it out.

nice case thanks, i just bought one

Just grabbed 2 of those cases, cheers!

Likewise we've had good experiences zooming up and down the country on hunting trips. Play the game and it's all very straight forward.

Had to laugh though... on one trip did I carried my mates rifle back up to him on the first leg then carried on with my normal multi-stop visits over the course of a business week. For the remaining 5 flights every time I checked in they asked for my FAL and where the rifle was. I got sick of telling them the rifle was only carried on the first leg. Seems the flag in their system assumes you're going to take it on all sectors of a trip.

It was a minor inconvenience really, considering all the times its gone right.