Air New Zealand has had clear-the-air discussions with the Royal New Zealand Air Force after it emerged dangerous items with the potential to bring down planes were flown by the carrier without its knowledge.
The air force has admitted a series of safety blunders by sending volatile substances on commercial flights, one of which was an Air New Zealand Boeing 747.
Chief of Air Force Air Vice-Marshal Peter Stockwell has also admitted the air force misled the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) when reporting the Air NZ flight incident in 2009.
It sent chemical oxygen-generating canisters from Auckland to Vancouver aboard a flight carrying 379 passengers and crew without notifying the airline.
Air NZ was unaware it was carrying the canisters, which if incorrectly activated, can create a great deal of heat and the oxygen can fuel a fire. Similar canisters brought down a United States passenger jet in 1996, killing 110 people.
An Air NZ spokeswoman told NZ Newswire it had spoken with the air force about the incident.
"Based on our conversations with the RNZAF we are confident it has learned from this issue and that this will not happen again," she said.
The blunder was revealed this week in a damning report on the safety culture in the air force, with one of the authors saying the system designed to protect staff was broken.
In a statement Air Vice-Marshall Stockwell said the air force had shipped dangerous goods on civilian flights at least eight times between 2002 and 2009.
The air force knew of problems after wrongly shipping a helicopter engine, classified as dangerous goods, on a DHL flight, he said.
A series of errors meant the Vancouver incident was kept quiet at the time.
It also failed to notify the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) because it thought it only had to if there was "a serious harm event".
The CAA is now investigating the incident. Aviation laws mean failing to report such incidents carry penalties of up to $30,000.
