Airport Retailers Feel Push and Pull of Carry-On Changes

The ban on carrying liquids and gels onto airplanes created an economy of its own at Washington area airports yesterday.

Passengers snapped up extra bags so they could check items they had planned to carry on. A few airlines bought extra water and soda for their passengers. Some retailers cleared their shelves of toothpaste, hair spray and eyedrops at the request of airport authorities.

Marriott's Renaissance and Ritz-Carlton hotels beefed up on toiletries for their arriving guests, including contact lens solution and sunscreen, and fielded calls from departing guests about shipping the items they couldn't take with them on flights.

The emergency situation, which took effect yesterday after 24 people were arrested in Britain in an alleged plot to blow up U.S.-bound flights with liquid explosives, disrupted commerce for better and worse both inside and outside airport walls.

At Dulles International Airport and Reagan National Airport, shopkeepers whose stores are behind security checkpoints were asked by the airport authority to remove banned items, except for beverages, from their shelves, said Rob Yingling, spokesman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which operates both airports.

"We asked them to do this so we can help travelers avoid inadvertently buying one of those items and breaking the rules," Yingling said. "We don't want people to buy items they have to immediately throw away."

Retailers selling large amounts of beverages were expected to take the hardest hit. Even so, vendors such as Rita Bhasker and David Sterling, who co-own six Guava & Java airport cafes, said their beverage sales slumped only in certain stores.

At San Francisco International Airport, where their two stores are beyond the security checkpoints, sales were down 25 percent by mid-afternoon.

"Once [travelers] get past the security lines, the customers do not have time to buy anything, and when they do, they are not buying coffee or water because they don't have time to consume it before they board their flights," Bhasker said.

But at Dulles, where their stores are before the checkpoints, sales were 10 percent higher than they were Wednesday, possibly because people were drinking while standing in long lines.

"There's really nothing we can do about our situation," Sterling said. "Basically, you ride it out, deal with the bad times and hope for peace."

Just in case travelers are parched by the time they board their flights, Gate Gourmet, a Reston-based catering company that serves more than 250 airlines worldwide, said it is stocking more than the usual amount of drinks on its catering trucks.