Sir, – On a flight back from the US recently, I discovered that Aer Lingus had just raised the price of a quarter bottle of wine from €5 to €5.10, while leaving the dollar price at $7. This is both irritating and inconvenient. Most people will have donated their small change to the admirable Unicef collection on their outward flight and retained some euro notes for their return.
Making change is inconvenient for travellers and time-consuming for flight attendants. The sum involved will make very little difference to the balance sheet and anyway there must be more than a 100 per cent mark up on the duty- free bottles. Not everyone can afford to travel Premier, so why does Aer Lingus want to discommode the majority of its customers and its hard-working staff? – Yours, etc,