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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.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

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Barclaycard Avios card

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There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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British Airways American Express

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You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

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The Platinum Card from American Express

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We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

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You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

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There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

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American Express Business Gold

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Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (445)

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

  • Vinz says:

    Got my order, all intact and correct. My champagne flutes were wrapped in a bit of paper and I was surprised they didn’t break in transit. Dpd tracking number didn’t work but it arrived quickly from dispatch email.

  • Kate says:

    Is there anyone who still hasn’t received a despatch confirmation from last Monday as I haven’t heard anything at all since my email order confirmations. I did email them the other day and got a standard reply. My invoices seemed to come up in the 20,000+ and that was on Monday morning at about 845am. Maybe I am one of those they have decided not to honour the order for some strange reason.

    • joe says:

      Same here – i tried calling but nothing – tried emailing nothing. money has left my account – i am a bit worried – who know “whatajoke”

    • Graham D says:

      You are not alone, Kate.

      If you paid by PayPal via Amex, take a look at the transaction contact…

    • Richmond_Surrey says:

      My order was 21xxx, noon on Monday and it wasn’t dispatched yet. I wouldn’t worry too much. They will send it at some point.

    • SK says:

      Same here, ordered last Monday too, not a dickie bird

  • Jimbo says:

    Also still awaiting on two orders (one from about 11am on the Monday and one from Tuesday when some things came back into stock). Absolutely zero contact about delivery. Surely they are dispatching orders FIFO?

  • Nigel W says:

    For those who got their orders. Was it usually the next day when DPD delivered? The tracking number is still not working so kind of having to do as guessing game of when it will come!

    • Dave says:

      On my two orders the one with a tracking number that worked came 2/3 days after the dispatch email and the one which didn’t work came the day after the dispatch email. It also started working a few hours after the email.

      • Nigel W says:

        so the dispatch email i got sent yesterday morning, I finally got notification from DPD they have it in the past hour.

        • Lady London says:

          Basically the dies

          • Lady London says:

            …..correction first email is likely sent to you when the shipping label is printed. The email says it’s despatched but typically at that point it only means the package has – at best – been moved internally to whichever internal area the courier vehicle will pick it up from. That might be, say, 3pm or 6pm. Or could have missed the day’s last or only pickup. So you got an email that says it was despatched but it’s not picked up till following day still.
            When it reaches the courier depot, or at a later stage, you will eventually get an ‘it’s on the van’ message with, in the case of DPD, an estimated delivery hour. (DPD often sends more messages in between pickup and this point, than others.)
            Normally it becomes trackable at the depot and
            the tracking ref will often change.(This is due to whoever fulfilled your order not having fully integrated systems with courier and is common).

            So when you receive your first ‘despatched’ message it may be that only your label’s been printed :-).

            You are lucky it’s DPD. Could have been worse. Could have been Yodel 🙂

  • jay says:

    what happens if you order something at an A+ standard on Monday – and havent recieved anything yet – in fact no contact – and the same items on the items have now been downgraded to a B level – which do we get?

    • Lady London says:

      depends if stock is allocated at the time the order is confirmed, also on their restocking procedures (which is a reason some orders can be delivered out of sequence) , also if they vary the item number according to different quality levels if the same item (or not) etc…

  • Kate says:

    Well not sure if this is coincidence or not but I got email confirmation today for one of my orders after I emailed asking if there was an update on it. The order I am getting was one I did the next day so god knows what has happened to the first one. I am slightly happier now.

    • Stuart says:

      Did you contact them via the contact form or did you manage to get an email through? The emails bounced back and the phones are not answered. I have not heard anything and contacted them on Thursday when they sent half an incorrect order 🙄. Quite happy to cancel my order – just wondered how they are dealing with enquiries

      • Jimbo says:

        I think I’m getting to the same point. No word at all in over a week. My instinct is that my order will never arrive.

        I can accept people being swamped with demand but how difficult is it to send a generic email saying apologies and the latest timelines? Especially as others are receiving items who ordered after I did.

        Surely using eBay as the platform would have solved a lot of these issues?

        • Graeme says:

          I’m sure it would, but they’d want to drive traffic to their site (and also not pay eBay fees), which they’ve done.

        • Neil says:

          Just had a dispatch email for an order placed on Monday morning (order number in the 25*** range) They are working through them

      • Kate says:

        Stuart – I contacted them via the contact form yesterday but had emailed them on Sunday as well. I haven’t had any emails bounce back and I haven’t rung them judging by the fact that no-one else seems to get through to them.

  • Kate says:

    Neil – they appear to be working through them in a very odd way and not in numerical order as I would have thought they would have done. My order that I am expecting today was done the day after my first order and I have heard nothing about the first order that I did on Monday morning. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next week or so for everyone.

    • Neil says:

      I’m confident that if they still have stock they will despatch over the next week or so, however im not so confident that they have enough stock to fulfill all orders due to wrong items being sent etc. At least I’ve got my bread basket despatch confirmation (Hoping it’s the correct item )

    • Richmond_Surrey says:

      I suspect they may not work on orders by their consecutive numbers, but by the goods you bought. Maybe they are in different storage places, that’s why some stuff was dispatched earlier.

  • Kate says:

    Well one of my orders has turned up! Its missing one bit of it but they appear to have added part of another order in there. So that was an order up in the 26,000+ and 21000+. Just glad I have received something from them.

    • Richmond_Surrey says:

      Did you receive any dispatch notice, or did it just show up announced?

      • Kate says:

        Richmond_Surrey – I received an email yesterday and then a text this morning to say that it was on its way to me.

    • Jmadrid says:

      I’ve tried emailing them several times now and still no response to my mixed up order. I hope that by time they respond, they are not out of stock on what I ordered…

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

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