Heathrow to celebrate arrival of royal baby with T-shirts for arriving fliers

More businesses than you could possibly imagine are looking for a way to make a buck off the soon-to-arrive royal offspring in England. But at London’s Heathrow airport — which knows a bit about arrivals — they’re planning to herald the birth with free T-shirts and gift boxes for 4,000 passengers.

Once the baby is born, airport employees will fan out across its four active terminals and distribute T-shirts, shortbread, and teabags to the first 1,000 arriving and departing passengers in each terminal.

Heathrow hasn’t handed out treats like this to passengers before, but in recent years it has worked hard in its terminals to distract from the political squabbles that have left the busy airport with only two runways. In 2009, it had Alain de Botton act as a writer-in-residence in Terminal 5, and earlier this year welcomed BBC’s Masterchef show star chefs John Torode and Gregg Wallace to spend six months creating new menus for the airport’s restaurants.