The organisers of Warbirds Over Wanaka are not ruling out checking vaccine passports for next year's event.
Photo: Wikicommons
The biennial air show's organisers are working towards the Easter 2022 event after cancelling last year's event due to Covid-19.
Its general manager Ed Taylor said the event could only operate under alert level 1.
They would be continually monitoring how other large events managed the different restrictions and requirements, Taylor said.
That would include the use of vaccine passports.
"We do hope that there is going to be something that can allow large events to go ahead and if we have to check that people have been vaccinated and the government mandates it, then that's something that we could seriously look at and something that we would consider."
It would not be too difficult to introduce vaccine passport scanning, he said.
"Everyone who comes in to the airshow's grounds - we have 55,000 people come in over three days, and everyone is scanned in.
"So it will just be another layer of scanning at the entrance way so we're set up to do that already."
They would usually get people travelling from overseas to attend the event, but Taylor was not confident that would happen even by Easter.
"Unfortunately we don't think it's looking good for having our Aussie mates here or anyone from further afield.
"But the ticket sales have been going really well and we know there's a lot of pent up demand for air shows."
A decision on whether the event could go ahead would be made in the new year.
"We'll try our very best to get this event away. If we can't, we can't. But if we can at all, we'll hold Warbirds Over Wanaka."