In case your flight is cancelled, it doesn’t matter what airport you’re at, you must return any duty-free purchases you’ve made…
One of many many joys of travelling internationally is splurging at duty-free shops. Buying a bunch of stuff for a less expensive worth, all since you didn’t must pay any tax, provides a rush like no different.
However do you know that in case your flights are cancelled you must return all of your candy, candy duty-free items? Effectively, as reported by Traveller, a number of jet-setters have simply learnt this lesson the laborious means at New Zealand’s Auckland Airport.
One passenger, named Molly, advised Traveller that she’d made it via airport safety and had purchased to her coronary heart’s content material on the duty-free retailers. However then, forty minutes earlier than her Jetstar flight was alleged to take her to Sydney, Australia, she seen a timetable signal.
And that timetable knowledgeable her that her flight had been cancelled. Molly sought out the gate she was alleged to take off from and 180 different passengers have been there ready for Jetstar employees to tell all of them what to do.
At this stage, Jetstar employees started strolling the passengers again via the airport and it was made clear nobody can be flying that day – Molly claimed that many needed to rebook their flights for hundreds of {dollars}.
After all, there’s nothing worse than having a flight cancelled on the final minute; being stranded severely sucks.
However Molly stated that what actually added insult to harm is that proper earlier than she and her fellow passengers made it to safety and the airport’s exit, the Jetstar employees members made everybody who had duty-free purchases, return to the shops and return them.
And passengers weren’t allowed to go away the airport till that they had completed so. In keeping with Traveller, “a spokesperson for Jetstar stated that it was a authorities requirement that duty-free items be returned, however passengers might repurchase their items previous to their rescheduled flight”.
However which authorities? New Zealand’s or Australia’s? Or is that this some world factor that every one airports implement? Effectively, after a little bit of analysis, it seems the UK enforces the identical rule. A spokesperson for Bristol Airport advised ChronicleLive:
“Returning duty-free is regular process for a cancelled flight. Clients should purchase duty-free, and obtain the duty-free discounted costs, [but] this allowance is simply eligible for patrons who’re departing from the UK.”
“When flights are cancelled, the client isn’t leaving the UK, so it’s a customs requirement that every one duty-free purchases are returned, and a full refund supplied. That is an HM Customs requirement.”
Additional analysis suggests that almost all, if not all, governments and customs departments all over the world implement this requirement. And we perceive it. However we are able to additionally perceive what an inconvenience it might be for travellers.
Maybe, to stop travellers from ever dealing with this trouble, airways ought to try to tell their passengers when a flight’s been cancelled as quickly as doable. That means, they gained’t even hassle going to the airport and hitting up the duty-free shops till their flights have been rebooked and/or rescheduled.
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