Film crew allowed in for Avatar

Fifty-six film workers have been allowed past New Zealand’s borders, which are so tightly closed for others that families are stuck with oceans between them.

The chartered Air New Zealand 787-9 Dreamliner touched down in Wellington before dawn yesterday, carrying workers for the Avatar film sequels and likely one other New Zealand Hollywood production.

It was the first ever commercially operated plane to fly directly from Los Angeles to Wellington.

The flight took them from a global Covid-19 hotspot – Los Angeles is the county with the fifth-highest number of coronavirus deaths in the United States, itself the worst affected country – to New Zealand, which has just one active case.

Johns Hopkins University’s tally of confirmed Covid-19 cases ticked past 6 million yesterday. Nearly 1.8 million of those were from the US.

The film crews on board were taken directly to quarantine – understood to be at QT Museum Apartments on Wakefield St, where guests outside confirmed Avatar crews were staying inside.

Air New Zealand originally told Stuff that flight crew were exempt from quarantine and would have been allowed out of hotels during overseas layovers.

After it was pointed out to the airline that this contradicted Ministry of Health guidelines, it revised its statement to say crews were not allowed outside the hotel until it was time to leave the country.

‘‘These are the requirements that crew recently returned from Los Angeles would need to have complied with,’’ the statement said.

To Wellingtonian Wendy Harnett, whose Japanese husband is stranded in Tokyo and unable to enter New Zealand during the Covid-19 crisis, the news was upsetting.

‘‘That is really hurtful to Kiwis like us who are waiting for loved ones to come and join us.

‘‘They probably shouldn’t be putting film workers and other businesses above reuniting New Zealanders and their families,’’ she said.

Air New Zealand refused to reveal how many passengers were on the charter flight.

QT Wellington general manager Ian Charlton could not comment on who was staying.

‘‘But we can assure the public that any guest staying with us must adhere to the Ministry of Health protocols of 14 days’ self-isolation.

‘‘In addition to QT also following Ministry of Health guidelines, we have additional measures in place to ensure staff, guests and the public’s safety is our highest priority; examples of this include additional cleaning regimes and staff rostered with the same colleagues in work bubbles.’’

Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford said New Zealand borders remained closed and public health was the top priority when exemptions were made.

There had been 2200 exemptions made on caseby-case merits.

They were mostly for families of New Zealand citizens and residents, health workers, or on humanitarian grounds.

But about 5 per cent were for ‘‘other essential workers’’, which meant it was for urgent work that could not be done by a New Zealander, or was critical to the Covid-19 response, maintaining critical infrastructure, or there would be very significant economic benefits resulting from it.

He had signed off 22 applications for 154 workers to enter New Zealand. Of these, 56 were within the film industry.