Air New Zealand will carry out weight sampling on some flights between 31 May and 2 July 2023.Credit: Air New Zealand

(CNN) -- Take off your shoes. Take your keys out of your pocket. Get on the scale?


Well, yes: the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority requested that its national airline weigh passengers departing on international flights from Auckland International Airport until July 2, 2023.

The program, which Air New Zealand calls a "passenger weight survey," is a way to collect data on the cargo and weight distribution of planes, the airline explained.

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"We weigh everything that goes on the plane: from cargo to meals on board, to luggage in the hold," Alastair James, the airline's cargo screening improvement specialist, said in a statement. "For customers, crew and cabin bags, we use medium weights, which we get by doing this survey."

Even so, weight is something personal that not everyone wants to reveal. To protect people's privacy, the airline says it has anonymized the data.

Travellers will be asked to step on a digital scale when checking in for their flight. Information about your weight will be sent to the survey, but will not be visible on the agent's screen.

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They will also place your luggage on another identical scale to weigh it separately.

"We know that stepping on a scale can be daunting. We want to assure our customers that there is no visible screen anywhere. No one can see his weight, not even us," says James.

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It's not the first time Air New Zealand has asked passengers to step on the scale before boarding. Domestic passengers participated in a survey in 2021, but that of international travelers was delayed due to the pandemic.

Among those who may be asked to participate in the survey are those traveling on the direct flight from Auckland to New York's JFK Airport.

This flagship 17-hour route was implemented last fall as the linchpin of the airline's post-pandemic strategy. It is also one of the longest flights in the world.

Air New Zealand