Air New Zealand will weigh its passengers before boarding

(CNN) — Take off your shoes. Take the key from the pocket. Available in size?

Yes: The New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority has asked its national airline to notify passengers departing on international flights from Auckland International Airport until July 2, 2023.

The airline explained that the program, which Air New Zealand calls a “passenger weight survey”, is a way of collecting data on air cargo and weight distribution.

“We weigh everything that goes on a plane: from cargo to on-board baggage to hold baggage,” Alastair James, the airline’s cargo handling expansion specialist, said in a statement. “For customers, crew and cabin bags, we use an average weight that we get by doing this survey.”

However, weight is a personal thing that not everyone likes to reveal. The airline says it has anonymized the data to protect people’s privacy.

Passengers will be asked to step on a digital scale while checking in their flight. Your weight information will be sent to the survey, but the agent won’t see it on the screen.

They will put your luggage on another identical scale to weigh them individually.

“We know getting on the scale can be intimidating. We want to make sure our customers don’t have screens anywhere in sight. No one can see your weight, not even us,” says James.

This is not the first time Air New Zealand has asked passengers to step on the scale before boarding. Domestic travelers participated in a survey in 2021, but the survey for international travelers was delayed due to the pandemic.

Passengers flying direct from Auckland to New York’s JFK Airport may also be asked to participate in the survey.

The iconic 17-hour route was implemented last fall as the linchpin of the airline’s post-pandemic strategy. It is one of the longest flights in the world.