Budget airline Ryanair complains to OFT

Arrivals and departures

[7th April 2008]

Low fares airline Ryanair has made a formal complaint to the Office of Fair Trading regarding judgments made by the Advertising Standards Authority about some of its advertising.

Ryanair accuses the ASA of "unfair procedures, bias and factually untrue rulings" in its judgments against seven of its adverts over the past two years. These include the budget airline's 'greedy Gordon Brown' advert where the ASA ruled that figures on CO2 emissions provide by the UN and Stern Report were factually inaccurate.

The ASA also ruled against Ryanair's Eurostar ad, where it found that a 2 hour 11 minute train journey was 'not necessarily' slower than a 1 hour 10 minute flight, and a Eurostar fare of £27 was 'not necessarily' more expensive than Ryanair's £15 air fare.

Most recently the ASA has ruled against Ryanair's 2 million seats for £10 ad following a complaint from someone who the budget airline says was unable to remember any of the details of the flight he was trying to book.

“In this latest ruling the ASA has denied Ryanair fair procedures, has ignored Ryanair’s evidence and it has pursued a complaint which has no evidential basis whatsoever. This clearly confirms the ASA’s bias, and blind determination to rule against Ryanair’s adverts even in cases such as this where they accept that the 2 million seats offer was factually accurate," says Ryanair spokesman, Peter Sherrard.

“We are calling on the OFT to examine this catalogue of mal-administration, bias and incompetence by the ASA, and require in future that the ASA rules on Ryanair’s adverts in an independent, impartial, fair and reasonable manner," states Sherrard.

Written by: Nick Purdom

 

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Budget Airline Ryanair Complains To OFT