Korean Air offers first duty free store in its A380 aircraft

Korean Air, the national flagship carrier of South Korea will be featuring its new Airbus A380 aircraft with world’s first in-flight duty free store. The new store will be located at the back of the lower deck and will cover the area of 13 coach class seats. AIM Aviation, a UK based company and cosmetics brand Lancome will be responsible for designing and maintaining the new in-flight store.

The store will be divided into five units and of those five units one entire unit will be dedicated for a video wall that will display the advertisements. The other remaining units will exhibit products such as cosmetics, fragrances, accessories and a limited selection of liquor. Thus the store will serve as a future physical catalogue.

Each unit will weigh approximately 130kgs and will display at least 30kg of products and the net weight of the entire unit will be less than that of 13 passengers.

“There is a loss of revenue because of that. But, they believe they can get increased revenue by selling higher branded products than they would have gotten from having those 13 seats on the aircraft. Also, by selling the advertising space, they will gain revenue from that,” said, Jon Heath, technical director, AIM Aviation.

The introduction of new store is absolutely a new step of the airline to distinguish itself from the other competitors. The airline has also dedicated the upper deck of the aircraft exclusively for business class. The upper deck will be featured with 94 business class seats and the lower deck will be equipped with 12 First Class and 301 coach class seats.

The airline will receive the delivery of its first superjumbo by the end of May 201, which will start its operation to the Asia cities such as Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong from 1st June 2011.