Air travellers refuse to show boarding passes at airport shops

Shops have been demanding customers show their boarding cards before purchase to identify their travel destination.

Nick Barton, CEO of LA, said: “We are on track for a record-breaking summer”.

The terms and conditions on The Loop – Dublin Airport’s shopping website, also states that a boarding card must be presented when purchasing goods. On the other side, Harrods sells all its products duty free in its Heathrow stores. “The continuing growth in passenger numbers makes our £100 million redevelopment project essential to the role LLA plays in easing capacity issues in the South East of England”. As indicated previously, there are separate duty free and duty paid prices for many alcohol products.

Not all shops, and not by the whole 20%.

However, there are other retailers operating in airports.

But many say airport staff have still demanded to see boarding passes, incorrectly saying it is for security reasons.

Boots told the BBC its policy is “in accordance with the rules set out by the government”.

Most passengers are under the assumption it is a legal requirement to hand over a boarding pass, but that is not the case.

The company added that “operational and financial system constraints” make dual pricing of products for customers inside and outside od the EU a “practical impossibility”.

A former Boots worker said: “I used to work at a UK airport and I remember a colleague asking a manager once why we were required to ask for boarding passes”.

By refusing to show your boarding pass the only people to be hit are the retailers.

How do you handle Value-Added Tax on sales – do you consider it a Brucey Bonus when you sell outside the EU or do you manually refund the proportion of the selling price that would have been due to HMRC if it had been a sale within the EU (especially bearing in mind that eBay won’t give you any fees back for a partial refund)?

“While this represents a modest saving on high street prices for travellers within Europe it creates a profits bonanza for stores on sales to passengers leaving the European Union”.

The Independent noted: “One of the biggest offenders appears to be Boots, which has outlets in the vast majority of UK airports.