Anyone watch that garbage on Channel 4 this evening? Shocking facts included; Airports make money by selling you stuff "Duty Free" booze is not very cheap if flying within EU Chocolate is expensive in the airport shops Airport bars sell alcohol which makes people drunk Half an hour of my life I'll never get back!
Haha, sounds like a cracker! Did they cover important aspects like airports are where you can get planes from?
LOL. I worked in a prior life on a couple of airport privatisations and was gob-smacked at the amount of analysis that goes into making sure that nobody can avoid the duty-free shops. Don't BA even have to pay extra so that people can go straight into the Concorde Room instead of via the shops? Also would have been a great scoop to get somebody on record saying that the airports will never let the liquids restriction be relaxed because they make so much money air-side...
From memory, Gatwick North, Luton, City, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester T3 and Heathrow T5 don't make you walk through the Duty Free store to get to the departure lounge (yet). It's the smaller ones like Leeds that do.
If only I could figure out why they won't let me buy a bottle of Pimms on my EU flights - then I might actually spend 5 minutes inside the duty-free...
I can't remember where it was (which is fitting, given the story), but I almost missed a flight once because I got 'trapped' in Duty Free. Took me absolutely ages to figure out the right way. I may have had a rather enjoyable time in a bar before...
Add Madrid T4S they hide the lounge inside Duty Free, which really confused me the first time! (That said, the duty free shop there quite often has excellent offers on Scottish single malts, available to EU travellers, and often some pretty decent cheap spanish wine, which is why I'm not normally popular with other fliers on MAD-LHR when it comes to overhead storage space on board...)
I think it's fair to say that the lounge at T4S used to be quite easy to locate, but the monster that is duty free has grown and grown to devour anything in its path!
