Queenstown Airport hosted a New Zealand first on Friday night, when an Airways’ control tower was lit up to celebrate Winter Pride.
TomTom Productions were brought in to create two strips of lights across the top of the tower, which rotate all the colours of the rainbow, and will remain in place for the duration of this year’s Pride celebration, which officially started on Friday and runs until this Sunday.
The lights were unveiled, appropriately, by drag queens Nova and Frothy La Frou Frou, on the airport runway.
Queenstown Airport chief executive Glen Sowry said the airport corporation had enjoyed a "really strong relationship" with Winter Pride for the past five years, and the idea to light the tower was a "fantastic way of demonstrating" that.
It had not been without its challenges, though.
"At an airport, you don’t just flash lights around the place willy-nilly, because ... we’ve got really strong rules around lighting [and] lasers to preserve operational and aviation safety.
"So the planning ... is a lot of work, and our friends at Airways have done a lot of work with us to get that sorted."
"It’s an evolution of seeing organisations, businesses, no matter what shape or size in Queenstown really get behind Pride, understand the importance, not just for once a year, to invest in our communities, [making them] safer and more inclusive for generations to come."
Airways director Gavin Fernandez said the organisation worked hard to be welcoming of everyone, but realised there was still more work to do.
"We’re all about safety at Airways ... It’s not just safety in the sky, it’s safety at work, so people can feel safe to arrive at work as their authentic self — talk about their partner and have photos of their family on their desk.
"Personally, I want to go further. Not just safe, but it’s a non-event, that it’s accepted.
"We’re really excited to find this opportunity that lets us show our own people, and the community, that at Airways, we support Rainbow community and we’re really happy to be celebrating Winter Pride with the whole community."
