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You can buy British Airways First Class crockery and bedding: the sale is now live

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And now, from Waterside …. it’s the Sale of the Century!*

Over the course of the last few months lots of airlines have been selling off their excess stock of amenity kits, snacks and even entire (stocked) bar carts.

Whilst some of BA’s catering partners have sold off their stock (such as the Speedbird IPA by Brewdog and Pickering’s Centenary Gin) British Airways has not sold anything directly ……. until now.

BA First Afternoon Tea William Edwards crockery
BA First afternoon tea on William Edwards crockery

British Airways is selling a number of items from the First Class service including a range of bedding and crockery. In the press release it said:

“Although the at-home experience is no match for the real thing, customers or collectors can pick up items such as William Edwards plates, soup bowls, cups, saucers and even a butter dish for reasonable prices, allowing them to create an authentic First Class dining experience at home.”

Bread baskets, hot towels (which arrive cold!), hot towel plates, champagne flutes, coasters and the Club World casserole dish are also be available, as will the First Class slippers and day blanket.

All of the crockery and bedding is brand new, for clarity!

William Edwards crockery British Airways First class
The BA First William Edwards crockery

Why is BA selling First Class stock?

Given none of the items listed are perishable, you would think that BA would be happy to hold on to them rather than sell them.

It would not be the first time BA sells off excess stock. Staff sales are a semi-regular occurrence at HQ; Covid-19 may just have pushed this online.

There are a few reasons why BA might have chosen to liquidate its stock:

BA thinks it can raise some cash from the sale of the items, which can only be positive given the flying outlook for the winter;

The retirement of the 747 fleet and the significant reduction in available First Class seats means BA now has an abundance of crockery and bedding, more than it can realistically make use of in the coming years;

The lack of flying in the past months means that breakage has significantly reduced, leaving BA with a mountain of items;

It plans to introduce a new service in the near future (this is, I accept, very unlikely given the current situation and the fact that the William Edwards crockery is only 18 months old!)

The First bedding has a thread count of 400….

Anything off the trolley dears?

The sale is now live and it turns out that the range of items is far more eclectic than we first expected …..

In addition to the family china, British Airways is also selling a range of general items, where you can buy stuff such as aircraft catering boxes or a waste top loader trolley for £150!

Notably absent, however, are amenity kits or first pyjamas.

The bargain of the day? You could get a set of 6 larger (28cm) dinner plates for £5! However, it turned out that this was a BA IT error and it should have read £50 ….!

How to buy

Looking at stock sales by other airlines, these items are likely to sell out fast.

The link to buy is here, and is now live. Click on ‘British Airways’ in the menu bar.

Let us know what you manage to pick up! If you want to use your British Airways American Express to pay, select PayPal as your payment option as Amex is not accepted directly.

We have bought a few items which we intend to give away in a reader competition in a few weeks.

*We know this is a misquote. You can see the Sale of the Century title sequence here, featuring a brief glimpse of a BA aircraft in Negus livery.


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Comments (445)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Graeme says:

    Just picked up my order of 6 plates purchased at the bargain misprice £5, so pleased with them I’ve ordered the side plates and bowls to match. I must admit I wasn’t expecting to receive them…. They are clearly brand new.

    • Andrew says:

      Excellent! I thought the saucers were misprised too at 6 for £5 but they have remained at that price so clearly not.

  • Vinay says:

    Thanks for the heads up today, managed to get the pasta bowls that were sold out earlier. None of my orders have arrived as yet, but I’m sure they’ll turn up.
    Also great job on the story and congratulations on the coverage.

  • Alex D says:

    All items now back in stock

    • KBuffett says:

      There’s no first bedding?

      • Andrew says:

        There was a day blanket, but they seem to all be gone now. Maybe more of a selection will be added now they know there’s demand. Amenity kits and PJs also missing.

  • Christine Lush says:

    Please can someone tell me how to contact Whatabuy, they have sent me the wrong item and I want to get it sorted. I have tried email and leaving a message on their website and all get rejected. I have tried phoning and their number is always engaged. Any suggestions.

    • Rhys says:

      Try their website contact form again – worked for me the second time I tried

    • Stuart says:

      I might have your goods then! I have received 2 items from an order of 5 and both items are wrong.

    • Stuart says:

      The email address gets rejected but I did as Rhys suggested and contacted them via the website form. I have been given the 6 dinner plates for £5 in error 😀

      • Chris Lush says:

        I have 6 bowls instead of 6 Japanese starter plates. Still have not been able to get a response.

  • Stuart B says:

    This is an absolute shambles. This website has absolutely no idea what it is doing. How on earth did BA not foresee that this level of incompetence would follow.

    I’ve spent over £200 here (I didn’t get the incorrectly priced plates!) and so far I’ve had no dispatch notification for orders placed before noon on Monday, and no responses to my emails or calls since Monday.

    I signed up for email notifications once the large plates came back in stock and never received one. Fortunately I refreshed the website one evening and was able to complete my set but because I can’t get through, I doubt I will be able to get them to combine my order, and I’ll be stung with two sets of delivery charges. Groan.

  • Andrew says:

    Anyone else ordered the coasters? They’re a joke – £5 for 3 bits of papery cloth – not the 3 roles of coasters the pictures on the site suggests you will get. Mistake or just incredibly poor value?

    • simpletastes says:

      They are disposable, they can’t possibly cost that, when you can get six mugs for £25 and six saucers for £5! It is inconceivable they are selling that by the piece, it would be like selling paper napkins by the piece.

      • simpletastes says:

        On second thoughts, I have a sneaking suspicion they are doing this to make up for the loss of mispricing the large dinner plates at 6 for £5 earlier!

      • Andrew says:

        Yes I said that in my message to them (which just bounced back from the webform as undeliverable despite multiple attempts) that it would be like Tesco having a picture of a box of tissues and “pack of 3” next to it and 3 individual tissues turning up in a plastic bag. The description even says “disposable” – so it’s certainly a mistake to only send 3 actual coasters. But the website has no way to contact them so I’ll just have to put up with my £1.65 coasters and treat them as a prized possession! I wonder if the published set of 10 packs of 8 hot towels will also just turn up as 10 towels with a box of 8 and 2 loose ones!!

        • Mike P says:

          I’ve got the same. I was a bit ‘wtf’ looking at them, but for the sake of a fiver I can’t be arsed with the aggro of chasing it up!

          My insulated box looks new. Kind of cool, but I’d have preferred a beat up one. The mugs are impressive for the £ (sadly I’ve only ever made it as far as J so I’d never used them before).

    • Lady London says:

      while I am sure it’s irritating, that would actually be normal way for the majority of (good) websites I buy from work. For efficiency most are not staffed up to revise or combine orders once they have been made.

      The usual answer is they might accept a cancellation and you re-order based on what is available at that time. Usually that’s less desirable as not everything may still be available.

      Sometimes the best thing to do is do a new complete order now and return the first one when it arrives. Some companies will force you to do this by not allowing cancellations after a certain point (Amazon) or ever (subsidiaries of TKMaxx I deal with in the US).

      From their point of view if you change your mind they have limited to zero ability to change their processes – and it adds massively to their costs.

  • babyg says:

    My Full Meal/Equipment box arrived today, didn’t realise just how light they are! Ive managed to secrete it into the kitchen under a bench where our plastic bags live – i think two of them on top of one another would be the perfect height under my bench… lets see how long i can keep it there before the Captain of the kitchen ejects it to the man cave…

    • Andrew says:

      Ah good idea!!! And yes, they look really heavy don’t they, but they are aluminium rather than steel. The Club World trays on the sale site will slide into the grooves if you want to put in a shelf.

    • Lady London says:

      Can you tell us what are these boxes like, @BabyG ? Are they insulated?

  • @mkcol says:

    Managed to purchase 4 Club blankets. The last time I managed to acquire one & brought it home the dogs loved it, so thought I’d treat them.

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