New Zealand airport introduces time limit on hugs

Dunedin Airport tells passengers in cars to keep farewells to under three minutes

An airport in New Zealand has introduced a three-minute time limit on goodbye hugs.
Dunedin Airport has told passengers saying a fond farewell to family and friends that they should limit their embraces in the designated car passenger drop-off zone to under three minutes.
Anyone needing longer for a goodbye will need to use one of the car parks, the airport’s management said.
“Airports are hotbeds of emotion with people arriving and departing. But if you want a fonder farewell, go to the car park. You get 15 minutes free in the car parks. But it’s caused quite a stir. People are saying: ‘You can’t tell us how long we can have a hug for,’” Dan De Bono, the airport’s chief executive, said.
“It’s really about enabling enough space for others to have hugs. There is only so much space in the drop-off area. Too many people were spending too much time in the drop-off zones. There was no space for others. I reckon three minutes is plenty of time.”
Mr De Bono said that he had researched the new measures.
“It turns out you need 20 seconds to get the oxytocin and the serotonin release from a hug. Anything less, you don’t get the happy hormones. And any longer, I guess you’re getting into the awkward territory,” he told Radio New Zealand.
“But we’re not here to tell people how long to hug for. It’s more the message of ‘please move on if you are going to spend longer, move to the car park’.”
What happens if people exceed the three-minute limit? “All our team will do is ask them to politely move to the car park. We’re not going to call the hug police. That would be bonkers.”
Reactions to the new regulation were mixed. “New Zealand has lost the plot,” an Australian woman wrote on X, while a New Zealander remarked: “Toddlers won’t be happy.”
Other social media users said the whole thing verged on the “inhumane”, insisting that “hugging is a human right”.