Duty Free: Who thought up this barmy idea???

[Coconuts]

Well as you probably know by now I returned from the States recently Not allowed to get the 'duty free'on my present check list :rolleyes:until leaving final airport in the US where the main issue on my mind was getting my connecting flight I somehow managed to have time to locate a duty free near my Gate.

All's well that ends well or so I thought, I waited impatiently in the line & purchased my bottle of wine. Like I do with anything I purchase I went to grab it from the ladyattendant, but she swung the other direction, hanging on to MY wine for dear life & refused to give it to me. Standing there very confused they explained to me I could collect it at the gate. :rolleyes:

Off I strutted to the gate under the misassumption they must be afraidtogive pax their duty free bottles in the shop lest they get pissed between the shop & the gate & I wasted no time in delivering mybeliefs to any pax in my vicinity who cared to hear not to mention my smirky remarks about what a bl**dy good weapon the feckin things would make. "Notat all"said they, they do the same for ciggies, chocolates indeed all duty free.

Soon before we were due to board our Boeing 777 a number of trollies were wheeled in stocked high with duty free. Total confusion reigned, I couldn't resist the remark "The Captain's sure to miss his slot with this". Pax became irritated, rude sarcastic comments were made right left & centre. The whole scenario was a shambles. Now could some bright spark please explain to me what was wrong with the old system & what on earth is the idea behind this crazy system??????

Anyone for me anyway the whole thing ended up to be a waste of time since at a regional airport I left me bottle on the plane, didn't realise till I passed through immigration so I reported it to the handling desk for that airline. Not a bother said they, when the lady rang through for me, the crew have found it & will bring it down. Only they friggin didn't. But hell that's another story, I'm in consultations with the airline at the mo & I'll give them time to redeem themselves. Believe you me if they don't it'll be up in here in 'red' & 'bold'. :mad:

[PAXboy]

I haven't seen this before but it does not surprise me. I would hazard a guess that it is to prevent regular travellers buying and then selling to staff before they get to the gate.

You could sell to cleaners and porters you meet along the way to the gate. They could tuck it into a refuse sack and sell it later. They could collect a fair number of bottles/cartons and sell them 'wholesale' or single bottles direct to friends. Thus, duty-free goods are sold in the USA without paying tax.

This probably results from some sting operation on staff at the port, who might have felt that their low wages left them with little choice OR they were simply greedy OR someone put them up to it. Just my guess.

[newswatcher]

:hmm: Duty-free collection, just before boarding aircraft, has been my experience at US airports for at least 4 years.

[Globaliser]

This system is due to the, er, non-standard way in which the US normally deals with international flights.

There is no outbound immigration control, so flights to international ports leave from the same concourses and gates as domestic flights. If you were allowed to take duty free with you from the shop you could just give it to passengers who were flying domestically (who might, the cynic in me says, possibly have paid you to go into the shop for them while they waited outside). Hence the duty free goods are taken to the gate and given to you as you board, after you have passed the boarding pass check and are logged as having boarded the aircraft. One grave disadvantage is that you can only shop until x minutes before the flight because the shop has to get the goods for everyone on each flight to the correct gate.

This is the same reason why there are virtually no facilities in the US for direct airside transit for international-international connections. You can't board the onward international aircraft without being in the same physical area as departing domestic flights. So even if you have arrived on an international flight, you have to clear immigration and customs before you can board the next international flight.

The only exceptions to this were, IIRC, MIA and LAX. Some terminals have physical structures that allow you to go directly into a transit area, and then straight from the transit area to the jetway of your departing flight. However, the facilities for direct international airside transit are horrendous - it's like being in a sin-bin, and in particular you can't access the normal facilities like shops, restaurants or airline lounges.

That part of it is academic at the moment, because after the 11.09.01 attacks the US decided to suspend direct international airside transit even where the facilities exist.

IIRC, there is only one true international terminal operating in the US at present, and even that is very new. T1 at JFK is only served by airlines operating international flights. One of the benefits was supposed to be direct international airside transit between flights in that terminal, but of course that isn't operating. One of the other benefits is carrying your own duty free shopping to the gate, like virtually everywhere else in the world - and therefore being able to shop until the last minute if that's what you want to do.

[Coconuts]

Thank you Globaliser for such a comprehensive reply :D

[knobbygb]

This has also been my experience when coming back from several trips, but just to confuse matters, when coming through Miami earlier this year I bought the obligatory ciggies (for me mum) and promptly walked out of the shop, only to be persued by the sales assistant informing me I'd forgotten my purchase! As Globaliser says, Miami seem to do things differently - perhaps the thousands of tons a year of class A drugs which come through the airport from Central America mean the local customs folk have more to worry about than a few packs of cigarettes!

[PAXboy]

Well - that was interesting! I have used JFK T1 recent years but, mostly, with travelling on VS, I pre-order my duty free. It gets delivered to my seat all ready to go during the cruise, so all I have to do is carry it off the plane, rather than on! Also scores more FFMs. I'll have to watch out if I'm on another carrier. Thanks for the warning.

[BahrainLad]

Let me guess....JFK Terminal 7?

Happened to me recently. Boarding an almost full 747-400, one load of pax go through the boarding pass check. Then they stop, and hang around in the vestibule. "Where's my Duty Free?". "Do you have a receipt?" (Cue much rustling around in handbag/wallet/briefcase). "Here it is." (Cue much rustling around of carrier bags trying to find matching receipt.). "Your Duty Free is not here, you'll have to wait." (Eventually, another trolley laden with booze/fags etc. arrives).

Now repeat 350+ times.

Took fecking ages.

[Coconuts]

Nah mate

Chicago, O'Hare, Terminal 1. Yes I heard some carriers deliver them straight to the PAX's seat but not UAL. Now my situation wasn't as bad as others since I puirchased mine so close to boarding time (hence my impatience) I guessed rightly that my stuff was on the smaller laden trolley wheeled in at the end. Also cause I was seated towards the back & my section was called last I let everyone else trip over each other, calmly waited till there were only a few bags (all totally similar & indistinguishable of course) to collect mine, infact I was able to point mine out :) My attitude was if there going to create such a ridiculous system I for one had no intention in getting my knickers in a knot over it. The poor girl who had the awful task of handing out the duty free to the hordes of impatient & confused pax who descended on her looked stressed out of her life, I really felt sorry for her but in hindsight some of the remarks were hilarious, I honestly thought one English woman was going to have a hernia.

A word of advice to the Yanks, you're honestly going to have to devise a better & more structured system than this. I have never & I mean never seen such a ridiculous & incompetent system in my life guaranteed to stress out & confuse already stressed out & confused travel weary pax.

[TightSlot]

It's been like this for years, for the reasons specified by Globaliser in his/her accurate post.

I'd add to that some additional considerations:

Smoking & Drinking are frowned upon (officially) in many parts of the US - there is unlikely to be much support for making things easier for those who do. Fragrances, well they tend to be made by the French...
They don't really like or trust foreigners. The US is such a large country that you can experience just about any kind of climate,scenery or activity without leaving the national borders, and this is partly why so many US citizens never set foot outside the country. Why make life easier for foreigners, or citizens who may be disloyal enough to take their business or leisure activities elsewhere?
Bureaucracy and inefficiency at US airports, and amongst government authorities is legendary, and is unfortunately combined with a culture of rudeness and "Jobsworth". If you don't believe me, next time you go through a US airport, take a second look at the Security staff, the Immigration and Customs officers and that's before you've met the airline ground staff and sometimes the needlessly officious cabin crew. They all have the same blank indifference to human needs and frailties that was historically found more usually in communist countries.
Finally, here's the headlines. They don't care what we think. There is nothing that we can do to change things (we're mostly foreigners after all). Wetbacks may flood across their borders daily, but US immigration are still going to treat UK (and other) citizens as potential criminals on a daily basis. The underlying arrogance of an assumption that I would wish to reside permanently over there may be breathtaking, but will never change.
Take action - don't go to, or through the US unless your business requires it and you have no choice. Avoid US carriers wherever possible until they change their culture and procedures. There are lots of other countries, and lots of other airlines who value your time, business and money just as much


P.S. Before the accusations of being anti-American start flying, may I point out that I grew up and was partly educated over there and retain many friends - sadly I just don't see them as often these days

[Pax Vobiscum]

Last time (admittedly quite a few years ago) I transited through LAX, there were no facilities. It makes answering the "address of first residence in the US" question a tad tricky! We spent many happy minutes trying to explain to the immigration officer that, much as we loved his country, we were actually planning to leave it again in a couple of hours time. I got the distinct impression he'd never encountered this before (he may have been new, of course).

A propos of nothing at all, I've also arrived at EWR with my first night's residence being on the Lake Shore Limited en route to Chicago (OK, OK, I know I'm a sad git). This also confuses the hell out of immigration ...

[Coconuts]

I'm sorry

This thread was started as a comment on the way that duty free is handled at an American Airport & wasn't intended to be turned into a rampant An-ti American slanging match. Infact although I flew in & out of America I spent less than one week of my month long holiday in the US, most was spent in Canada (TightSlot you're beginning to sound like a Canadian the way you rant & rave about the Yanks). :rolleyes:

In my short time in the country I found the Americans a totally likable people, one of them went out of his way to put a day trip on especially for me because he knew it meant so much to me & he knew I'd be devastated after flying so far, I couldn't see it happening at home. Near strangers gave me a lift in a car to my island accomodation & when we had difficulty finding it offered to put me up for the night. When people heard my unusual accent they went out of their way to strike up a conversation & be as helpful as they could, in my short time there I've made contacts that I'll probably have for a long time. Okay there was the one or two indifferent employees at the airport but this was more than compensated for by the numerous, considerate, helpful, humorous ones. To be honest with you Tightslot, maybe because I spent such little time in the country & geographically confined to one state I'm not in a position to comment but from my experiences I disagree with alot, not all you've said. IMHO you'll find in general if you're nice to people & interested in them they'll return the compliment & that in the main was my experience.

[ExSimGuy]

I have been flying international out of PHL for some years.

Used to be that my daughter and her fiance would be able to come right to the gate with me, and me with my D/F shopping in my hand.

Maybe then they twigged that (had I been dishonest, and had my daughter not been able to do her "in-flight-shopping" as an effay!) I could have passed the Scotch to her to take back to the booze cupboard at home!

So they started the "get it at the gate" system, which always worked for me - even as a "non-rev" pax who would be hanging around till the last minute to get a seat!

Post 9/11, my daughter and fiance are now not allowed to come into the gate area, so no risk of me slipping her bottle or five of duty-free SCotch, and the last couple of times I have flown we have been back to "carry it yourself"

My feeling is that I like the collect-at-gate system as I do my D/F shopping and then head to TGIF or suchlike for a beer or five and a smoke (only place in the airport us antisocial ******s can have a puff!) and if I collect it at the gate, there's one less place where my booze-befuddled brain can forget to take it with me ;)