we got on a taca plane in san pedro sula during the niquagrian war to go to new orleans. my duty free was not there. for some reason the stewardess told me they were "over there", which was at the next gate. we asked wher the plane was going. Houston.... the plane and the gate had been called for new orleans. we went to the next gate, our duty free was at the door. asked that stewardess where her plane was going. "new orleans"

i do not know how they handled the 150-200 people that were taken to the wrong destination. taca did not sort the peoples to the correct planes.

Easy example of what the US wants to prevent. A person buys a fully refundable ticket to any intl destination, shops duty free, picks up merchandise, leaves the secure area, cancels his ticket, and goes home with his duty free purchase.

In the US, as far as departures are concerned, there are no international terminals nor international zones. In other countries, duty free stores are located in international zones which are behind emigration control. No way for people to just leave after buying their goods.

There are a few exceptions: ORD Terminal 5 and SFO Terminal A being examples where duty free purchases are handed over at the till.

Not sure why the first conclusion is everyone has been ripped off. Maybe I'm too trusting, but before I made the assumption I'd been ripped off I'd first check my credit card on line and make sure a credit hadn't come through.

I've noticed that LIM (and maybe other Peruvian airports?) does the same thing with having DF delivered to the jetway. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind doing that.

Wirelessly posted (Apple iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

It is more an issue of immigration control than anything else. The USA currently does not have government-operated exit immigration control checkpoints at large international airports. Instead, airlines are in charge of swiping travel documents and uploading the APIS data to CBP/ICE to determine an individual's permission to leave the country.

The issue for duty free is that it means there is no sterile international departures area ("point of no return") for departing international pax. In most of the world, as a departing international passenger, once you have cleared exit immigration and security, you cannot just waltz out the door and reenter the country. If you changed your mind about traveling, you would have to be escorted back into the entry immigration area and be processed as an arriving traveler. The USA does not operate that way. It doesn't matter if you are flying to Cleveland or Frankfurt; if you wish, you simply can walk out of the airport at any point prior to boarding. And that creates a problem for duty/tax free sales, because there is no way to be 100% sure that those items, particularly alcohol and tobacco, will not be walked out of the secured area and used inside the USA without paying federal duty and any state and local taxes as applicable.

So, really, the only way for duty free businesses to remain in compliance with the law is for them to deliver restricted bonded merchandise directly to the aircraft door, which is the last point at which the traveler no longer has the option to waltz out the door and import those goods illegally.

Make sense?

Always pay with credit card, and always keep your receipt.

I've had duty free not show up before. Apparently, I had purchased from the location (DF1) not nearest to my gate. So that location would send their items to the shop (DF2) nearest to each gate, then DF2 was supposed to deliver to the gates closes to it. Since DF1 competes with DF2, sometimes purchases may have been "forgotten" to be delivered. At the end of the day, the store manager needs to close up the register, and since the purchase wasn't delivered/picked up, the store automatically processes a refund and put the total back to the credit card.

I got all this info because I was doing back to back MRs and went back to the same store the next day to find out what had happened. DF1 showed me that DF2 had noted "not picked up." I told him that the pilot, 2 FAs, and I were waiting until the door had closed and no one showed up, so it was in actuality "not delivered." The stores can always blame the international traveling customer since few would be able to go back to the same store the next day to contest it!

It's the same in Canada, yet most Canadian international airports have 'international' depature areas. Once you've entered it, to exit the international (or transborder) area you have to proceed through Canadian customs and immigration.

Daughter arrived home for Christmas, checked her card statement on line, and the amount is there

I must be missing something. I've never noticed duty free prices to be particularly good compared to just going to the local store. I understand other countries might be worthwhile, but if I can buy Absolut for $18 in duty free or $21 in my ABC store it seems like a lot of work to save $3.

Wow, hopefully she has contested it with the credit card company!

Keep in mind that most duty free liquor bottles are full liters while a standard American bottle (a "fifth") is only 750mL. You're getting 33% more booze for the money.

- As others have said, the duty free bottles are usually a liter.

- Duty-free is after security, so if you're only travelling with carry-on it's the only game in town.

Sure? I'm pretty sure I saw a guy from duty free at the gate while boarding the BA 77W to LHR in August.

Because that would let you buy it and then leave it in the US. Remember we have no outgoing passport control, the only restriction on access to the duty free stores is the need for a boarding pass to get past the TSA.