The aviation age

Passengers disembarking from a Tasman Empire Airways Limited (TEAL) DC-6 aircraft at Christchurch in 1956. The growth of international air travel in the 1950s and 1960s shifted much of the emphasis of quarantine work to the airport. Arriving passengers were channelled into an ‘Agriculture’ queue if they were carrying fruit, had muddy shoes, or had anything else to declare. Air travel accelerated with the arrival of wide-bodied jets in the 1970s.