Every aspect of our vision to make travel special begins with customer research. It's that insight that makes us so expert at matching onboard sales stock to passenger profiles.

But of course there's more to inflight sales than choosing stock. More and more airlines look to us to help with every aspect of this service - from deciding what goes on the trolley to ensuring that the right products get to the right aircraft at the right time.

Put all this insight, logistics, administration and performance management together with Alpha's enormous buying power, and the commercial benefits to our partners are obvious.

We don't see any reason why customer service should be any less special in the air than on the ground. That's why we work closely with our airline partners to inspire their cabin crews with as much passion and knowledge about our inflight retail programmes as we have ourselves. It's another important way in which we go the extra mile to drive sales for our airline partners.