ASA Adjudication on Flying Eagles Ltd

Ad

An Internet ad on a travel price comparison website, for HolidayGenie.com, stated “Price from £201 rtn (incl tax) from London (LHR) to Montreal (YMQ) Travel from: 01 Nov 2008 until 08 Dec 08 Updated 1 hour ago”.

Issue

The complainant, who was unable to find a flight within the advertised dates for £201, challenged the availability of flights at that price.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Flying Eagles said they had over 17,000 of their fares listed on the Cheapflights.com website alone and, although they had been unable to locate the fare to which the complainant referred, all those they had managed to check were correct.  They said they were unable to provide an example of a booking to Montreal because it was not a preferred destination and in the past six months they had made only three reservations to that location.  They explained that all fares shown were automatically collected and downloaded daily onto the website, and they were all inclusive of taxes.  They argued that, given the large number of fares and the constant change of availability, some flights would become full and offers would sell out, and it was not always possible for them to get them removed from the website immediately. They maintained that in those instances they would endeavour to "catch" the fares and remove them as quickly as they could.  They said, in the event that they received an enquiry based on a sold out offer they would do their utmost to try to accommodate the client and find the nearest possible date or fare to suit.  They maintained that any error on the website would have been unintentional and if the complainant had contacted them, a senior manager would have resolved the enquiry.  They added that they had received no complaints direct.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA acknowledged that Flying Eagles aimed to remove fares from the Cheapflights website as quickly as possible once they had sold out.  We noted, however, they were unable to provide evidence that return flights were available for £201 on the Montreal route.  Because they did not hold substantiation in support of the advertised "from" price, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1, 7.2 (Truthfulness), 15.4 (Prices) and 16.4 (Availability).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form.  We told Flying Eagles not to advertise prices for flights unless they held evidence that a reasonable proportion was available at the stated "from" price.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)