ASA: EasyJet claims were all hot air

Ryanair has successfully convinced the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that an advertisement ran by archrival easyJet was unfair on the Irish no-frills carrier.

The easyJet advert, which appeared in poster form, fell foul of regulatory standards for wrongly implying that Ryanair misleads passengers about which airport it will fly them to.

EasyJet has said it is “disappointed” by the ruling but will respect it. The low-cost carrier is also pressing on with its own complaint against allegedly libellous adverts by Ryanair.

The easyJet advert featured the slogan “Who loves flying you to the place you actually booked?” – which appeared above a table listing some of the routes operated by Ryanair.

Two columns appeared in the table, with the first denoting a popular city that passengers typically intend to holiday in and the second denoting the airport that Ryanair’s flights actually land in. Barcelona appeared next to the lesser known Girona, Paris next to Beauvais and Milan next to Bergamo.

Ryanair has in the past been criticised for flying passengers to obscure airports several miles from their intended destination, necessitated a long bus journey upon arrival.

But the ASA was unequivocal in its rejection of easyJet’s complaint, emphasising that at no point did Ryanair mislead its passengers about the destination in question. Customers were given relevant details about their itinerary at all stages of the booking process, the regulator concluded.

“We considered the challenging tone of the headline … combined with the implication that Ryanair misled customers and flew them to airports different to the ones they had booked was denigratory,” a spokesman for the regulator said. “The ad must not appear again in its current form.”

EasyJet UK general manager Paul Simmons accepted the findings, though he added: “It is a well-known fact that easyJet flies to major airports whereas Ryanair serves out-of-town airfields.”

The two carriers are still embroiled in an unrelated libel suit, which hinges on Ryanair adverts depicting easyJet founder Sir Stelios as a Pinocchio-type character who lies about punctuality statistics. Law firm Schillings has filed a writ over those “baseless and grossly defamatory” inferences.

© Cheapflights Ltd (Creative Commons image: lucamascaro / Flickr)

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