British Airways is set to buck an industry trend by reintroducing the inflight Duty-Free shopping cart on select routes over the coming months in an experiment that could see a much wider rollout of what was once a much-loved holiday pastime.
In recent years, many airlines around the world have removed the opportunity to purchase items like perfume, chocolates, tobacco and alcohol from the Duty Free cart altogether after seeing a massive decline in sales.
British Airways decided to dispense with its Duty Free carts at the start of the pandemic in an attempt to reduce contact between cabin crew and passengers, although the airline has retained a pre-order service for inflight delivery.
That’s all very well if you are organised enough to order ahead of time but what happens if you want to make a last-minute impulse purchase?
That’s exactly the market British Airways is looking to target with a decision to reintroduce Duty Free carts on flights to the Maldives and Toronto over the next few months as part of an experiment that could see the carts introduced across other flights.
British Airways is certainly going against the grain in its decision to bring back Tax Free goodies to the inflight exererience after the likes of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and SAS ditched their Duty Free carts in 2019, and Finnair followed suit in 2023.
Other airlines haven’t had inflight Duty Free for much longer, with American Airlines ditching its in-flight range in 2015 after a “contractual disagreement” with their retail partner. United Airlines had already jettisoned its own tax-free range a year before and Delta followed suit in 2016.
Some airlines have, however, also rethought their position on inflight Duty Free and last year SWISS Airways reintroduced inflight cart sales because they came to the conclusion that it was the mark of a ‘premium airline’.
I was optimistic when Sean Doyle replaced Alex Cruz whom everyone at BA (still) Loves To Hate . But having seen it up close and personal, the intentions Sean has were noble but the layers on layers of “executives” and “managers” that have built up or merely maintain an established clogged-up, immobile system prevent any real progress.
Putting IFR back onto the space-constrained high-density low-efficiency working environments that are an active and driving part of aircraft planning programs might be someone’s bright idea and light up someone’s performance dashboard in a Waterside cubby-hole but it will take a lot more than a cart full of not so cheap souvenirs to fix BA problems.
Attitudes like this won’t fix BAs problems, old attitudes and grudges are not a BETTER BA!
Swiss have summed it up…. Premium carrier
Right, so after trying to deliver a drink and meal service that’s already extremely difficult due to confined working space and equipment that’s barely fit for purpose, and half the crew disappear on their break, the few remaining are expected to somehow patrol the cabin every 30 minutes, check and re-stock toilets every 30 minutes, answer call bells and deliver whatever is requested, deliver a water/juice round on the hour from wobbly trays whilst negotiating curtain dividers/knees/elbows poking into the aisles, pass through the cabins with a box of bizarre snacks on a regular basis (because the ice creams have been taken away), re-stock liquor bars for the return flight and often fill in the onerous associated paperwork … and now also attempt to deliver a duty free service.
Hurray.