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I live in Sydney. I was wondering if it would be possible to take a trip to the airport and buy a whole bunch of Johnnie Walker duty free. Do you actually have to be boarding a flight, or can you just rock up, splash some money around and go home?
If you absolutely must be flying somewhere in order to buy some booze, would a domestic flight be sufficient? I've been thinking of visiting Melbourne for a while, and if it were possible to pick up some blue label on the way home I wouldn't complain!
Don’t remember the exact layout in Sydney, but in most airports (if not all), you can’t get to the duty-free shops without going through immigration (where applicable) and security, which you generally won’t be able to do without a boarding pass for a flight.
The shop will also often require to see the boarding pass, and in some places will make a distinction between people travelling domestic or international. In some countries like the US, as there is not necessarily a separation between domestic and international travellers, and you can exit the departures area at will, they will not give you the goods right away, but deliver them during the actual aircraft boarding.
In some airports (especially in the EU), duty-free shops will actually sell duty-free when they can (you are actually leaving the country, or in the case of the EU, leave the EU customs union), and make a discount equivalent to duty-free for other cases.
Note also that in the event you decide to go to another country and buy alcohol duty free on your way back, you have to pay import taxes when you arrive, unless you have less than the allowances, which are usually on the order of a couple litres of hard alcohol, so you couldn’t buy « a bunch » of whisky and benefit from the regime.
Duty-free shops (or stores) are retail outlets that are exempt from the payment of certain local or national taxes and duties, on the requirement that the goods sold will be sold to travelers who will take them out of the country.
Essentially, you can only buy goods duty-free if you're about to export them. Exactly which goods you can buy this way, and which duties and taxes they are exempt from varies from country to country.
You may be required to pay import duties and taxes at your destination on some or all of your purchases, and this, too, varies by country.
So, yes, you need to be going somewhere, and that somewhere must be a different country. Sydney to Melbourne won't qualify, but Sydney to Wellington, New Zealand, would.
My experience is limited to CDG, BKK, SGN and MNL but I think it's same scheme in other airports. You'll need to have an international boarding pass, going through immigration and security check to go in duty frees and departure gates as already said.
BUT I'm not sure you can easily go back to exit, be preparated to have to justify why you want to go back, get a deep security check and customs check where they'll probably tax your 'duty free' as you didn't cross border.
When you go out of a plane you're able to go to exit (through immigration and customs) or to another departure gate (if you're in transit to catch another international plane), but I never saw a departure zone interconnected to an exit (it's kind of 'diode' in electronics), maybe it's possible but you'll find an human being requesting lot of explanations...
Also if you don't have checked luggage you'll already probably win a deep security check with lot of questions on your 'departure' way. If you had checked luggage but finally not fly they'll get probably angry having to unload it from the plane (security need) with lot of questions, if they consider you not wanted to fly possible you get fined or ban by flight company and/or authorities.
So I guess it's definitively not a good operation in terms of economical and time and future plane travel.
