Online duty-free shopping takes off for BA

British Airways has launched an online shopping service offering the same duty-free products people can buy on board its flights, it emerged today.

The airline has been running a trial of its online High Life Shop since September and has now rolled it out in full.

The shop offers perfumes, jewellery, watches and electrical goods on which BA absorbs the cost of the VAT, enabling people to benefit from duty-free prices even if they are not flying.

It currently sells around 370 products through the site, including Gucci sunglasses and Swarovski necklaces.

But people can still only buy duty-free alcohol and cigarettes onboard the airline’s planes due to the different tax restrictions governing the sale of these products.

Richard Cushing, retail business director at BA, told The Times newspaper: “Like all things, we have tested the service to gauge what customers think and there has been an excellent reaction.

“It is an extension of what we offer on board and we’ll be offering good-quality products and quality prices.

“It will never be a major part of what we do, we are an airline, but we wouldn’t be doing this if it didn’t make commercial sense.”

BA is planning to increase the number of products it offers in the near future to include luggage, eye-masks and travel pillows.

Airlines are increasingly looking to generate money through the sale of other services.

Low-cost airline Ryanair aims to generate around 20% of its total revenue from ancillary services, such as the sale of travel insurance and food on board its flights.