ASA Adjudication on Dart Group plc

Ad

a. An ad for Jet2 in the national press stated "Winter Bargains ... Jet2.com The North's Lowest Fares".

b. A different ad for Jet2 in the national press stated "Take a Break! ... Jet2.com The North's Lowest Fares".

Issue

Ryanair challenged whether the claim "The North's lowest fares" in both press ads was misleading, because they believed that their fares from northern airports were lower.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Jet2.com (Jet2) said they conducted weekly competitor price analyses in order to substantiate their claims, and that they had conducted such a price analysis against their competitors the week the ad appeared in the national press. They said Ryanair did not fly to 13 of the 24 destinations featured in the ad. Jet2 argued that as the featured destinations were not comparable routes with Ryanair, they were by default cheaper. They said Ryanair did fly to a further four of the destinations featured in the ad, but that as Ryanair served different airports than Jet2 at those destinations, those routes were not comparable.

Jet2 said Ryanair was cheaper than they were on seven of the routes featured in the ad, but that those Ryanair flights departed from Liverpool or East Midlands airports. Jet2 said they did not consider that Liverpool or East Midlands airports were based in the North as per the ad's strapline.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted Jet2's argument that, as Ryanair's routes were not comparable with their own, they could claim to be cheaper by default. We also noted their argument that Liverpool and East Midlands airports were not in the North. We understood, however, that the destinations featured in the ad were served by Jet2 from Manchester, Blackpool, Leeds Bradford and Newcastle airports. We considered that in that context Liverpool airport could also be classed as based in the North, and that most customers would understand the claim "The North's lowest fares" to refer to all airports in the North of England, including Liverpool. We understood that, in the period when the ad appeared, Ryanair was offering one-way flights from £10.00 including taxes and charges from Northern airports such as Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds Bradford and Blackpool to destinations also served by Jet2, for example Rome and Alicante. We acknowledged that those fares were cheaper than Jet2's minimum advertised one-way fares for the same destinations, for example £19.99 and £35.99 for Rome and Alicante respectively. Although Jet2 and Ryanair sometimes served different airports at their common destinations, we considered that most customers would understand the claim "the North's lowest fares" to mean that Jet2 offered the cheapest flights from the North of England to the locations named in the ad, regardless of the specific airports they served. Because Jet2 could not substantiate that their fares from Northern airports were always lower than other airlines flying from the North of England to the same destinations, we concluded that the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 19.1 (Other comparisons).

Action

We told Jet2 not to repeat the ad in its current form.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)