<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Frequentflyer99:
I remember being told by a BA pilot some 35 years ago that at that time there was no check made at all of the duty free items loaded or unloaded from aircraft. The majority of the proceeds of the sales of duty free goods were regarded as legitimate staff perks and went straight into their pockets.
It looks as though not all the loopholes have yet been closed. If a random search turns up this haul, how much must be going undetected ?? Why have management not found a way of controlling these sort of problems ?</font>
35 years ago, this may have been true. Theft was actually Grand Larceny. Why do you think that BA stopped charging for drinks? Philanthropy? No, BA was losing a fortune on bar sales. I know for a fact that the First Class bar was given to be sold in Economy. Thus people paid for the drinks, and the money went straight into pockets. Unless they were actually caught doing it, it was ver very hard to prove. The stff came off the aircraft with quite a lot of money (£2-300 a week from short haul was not uncommon and worth a lot of money in those days). The money needed always to be the sort that crew would carry, but it could never be proved where the money came from.
One flight was actually picked up by security as there had been 8 pax in F (no Club in those days) and the amount of alchohol that they had "consummed" would in the words of the Co Doc have rendered the lot of them clinically dead. Same applied to headsets. How do you prove who paid for what.
Now that has gone. Totally. Duty Free sales are monitored ver very closely as the value of stock is very high. I know that we did have a problem at one stage at BCAL as we were always short and no one understood why. One day, we broke the 12th commandment and opened the duty free bar seal prior to departure as we were on a remote stand with a long slot delay. The stock tally did not match. We were short from the outset thanks to the commissaries (note they've gone as well).
This is a double thread as there is a similar one running above, but we tell the recruits in the training school that if they take so much as a bag of sugar, they can be fired.
I might tell you that the same applies to any food, drink, soap, toilet paper, anything. One girl over at BCAl was fired for taking a roast beef filet out of the First Class bin to take home for her dog.
What the US airlines charge for drinks is iniquitous. $5 is the same on domestic and international. I have been reading AA/UA and others, and am delighted to read that their clientele are deeply dissatisfied with the downgrading of the service aboard in all classes. They are doing us a great service.