The territory’s largest airline has reportedly said it will not count a duty-free box of liquor as a second piece of luggage, and therefore will not charge an extra fee for them. St. John Source reported that the exemption from AA came after Delegate Donna Christensen wrote a letter to an American Airlines executive. She said taxing liquor boxes as luggage would have a “disastrous impact on the tourism economy.”
It’s good to see AA make this move and even better to see that the Delegate made her move. Executives pay attention when they receive requests from Members of Congress. The island’s economy is fragile enough without the kind of blow to retail sales the baggage fee would have been. And a downturn in sales of rum would doubly hurt, because the VI’s receive as much as $80 million a year in excise tax rebates from the US government. So the liquor box exemption by AA is a triple-A good thing.
I think you’ll find that the only people who come to the V.I. specifically for duty-free liquor are those from Puerto Rico (including Vieques, and Culebra). And even then, they normally travel by boat to make the trip economically advantageous.
The point being, AA’s exempting liquor boxes from their luggage fee was not a short-sighted bottom-line decision, but one of goodwill. I applaud them for their vision.
There remains the problem concerning connecting flights, which needs to be addressed. Currently, if you have a connection, you are required to put your liquor in your luggage for that connecting flight. Well, this is just not feasible. Most times, there’s no room (at least in my luggage!), and secondly, who wants to risk the bottle(s) breaking in transit? Seems to be that this rule should be eliminated.