David On Airports

Are airports designed deliberately with this objective? In my subjective opinion, yes. Next time you are in an airport, sit down for a while and think over my answer. Possible my answer is more objective then you think.

Are you sitting? Now, are you comfortable? If the answer is yes then please let me ask, are you in a business or first class lounge? or possibly are you in a restaurant where you have had to pay at least a US dollar of a poor cup of coffee? Airports do not want you to be comfortable or you would not want to fly better then economy, touist, thirtd class, steerage, or whetevert title they use to denote cheap. If the seats were comfortable you would not wander around the duty free stores.

Duty free stores are another aspet of airport design. Are they cheaper? Or has there been a clever myth created, that has fooled us all? Or are they just the last place to buy before home. In poor countries the airport duty free shops often appear stocked with goods you could not buy in the country anyway. Some airports sell duty free between Immigration and Customs, just in case you did not purchase anything from the airplanes duty free catalogue.

Airports also stocked invariably with the same duty free goods, with some culturally specific execptions. But ninety percent of the merchadise is the same; Alcholo, tobbaceo, cosmetics, chocalate, designer merchandise, etc. Airlines could save carrying the weight of all these generic duty free and turn the duty free stores into large catalogue shops. Instead of picking up purchses in the boarding lounge, passangers could pick it all up at the arrival gate of their destination. Duty free stores can just take their commissions and Email ahead the inventory of duty free before each flight.

Restaurants, cafes and vendor stalls also flourish to caterer to the needs of the bored airport inmate. Some passengers are hungry thirtsy, or both, and need nouishment, but some are attracted for the need to kill time (And the comfort of the seats.) And have you noticed they are not cheap. Do you have to pay tax? If I buy a bottle of scotch it is cheaper than outside (Most of the time.) If I buy a cup of tea, it is cheaper outside, but then I cannot go outside. We are the imprisioned consumers.

Of course ariports cannot force stingy, spinddrift passengers, like me, to give up their cash, but airports do not care about people like me. Airports have families, businesspeople, and the 'More money then sense' passengers in their sights. Airport shops are nets with holes big enough to let thr small walleted through. Those small fry will mature one day, for the moment airports just want the habitual purchsers and are designed in mind for them.