Originally Posted by percysmith

Since the missus is not smartgate-eligible, I took the opportunity to quiz the INZ officer:

"I've a mate joining us in a couple of days. He's leaving on the 30th of September from the US and arriving here on 2 October. Does he need a ETA?"
"Does"
"Oh okay. We got confused that the govt.nz website says departure date and INZ site says arrival day"
"Is by arrival date. We know the sites are a little confusing"

The INZ officer's badge only has her identity number, I didn't get a name.

Originally Posted by Mwenenzi

In my opinion the NZeTA applies for people arriving from 0:01 01 Oct 2019. That is when the new law will apply. The NZ Government text about 'leaving from" are IMHO just very poor text by some government muppet. Especially for flights from USA where you can skip a complete calendar day, due to crossing the international date line. That text will cause problems.

Will be fun & games a for people flights arriving up to 23:59 30 Sept / from 00:01 01 October.
I often take a flight to NZ that has a scheduled arrival of 23:55. I can be through the immigration e-gates before or after midnight depending on if the flight is early, on time or late.