ASA Adjudication on Airline Network plc

Ad

A promotional e-mail, for Airline Network, entitled “5 days to book - USA £195 & more great savings”, listed flight prices to various long haul destinations, for example “New York £195 Orlando £250 Las Vegas £269 … Dubai £279 Bangkok £445 … Sydney £638”. “From” prices were listed for car hire and hotels. A disclaimer in small text at the bottom of the e-mail stated “All flight prices quoted include all pre-payable airport taxes but exclude Airline Failure Protection charge … Quoted ‘from’ prices are per person, and are correct at time of publishing, but are subject to change and availability, which may be limited. Please go to www.airline-network.co.uk to confirm current prices and availability.”

Issue

Lastminute.com:

1. pointed out that the £5 Airline Failure Protection (AFP) charge was mandatory and should therefore have been included in the advertised price and

2. objected that the flights were not available at the advertised prices plus the AFP charge.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Airline Network did not respond to the ASAs enquiries.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA was concerned by Airline Network's lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code clause 2.6 (Non-response). We reminded them of their obligations under the Code and told them to respond promptly in future.

We noted the small print stated that prices excluded the AFP charge. We also noted from Airline Networks website that it was not possible to remove the charge when it was offered with a flight. Because it was not optional, we considered that the charge should have been included in the advertised flight prices. We also considered that we had not seen evidence to show that a reasonable proportion of flights were available at the advertised fares plus the AFP charge. We concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 2.6 (Non-response), (7.1 (Truthfulness), 15.2 (Prices), 16.1 (Availability of products) and 27.4 (Sales Promotion Rules)

Action

We told Airline Network to include the AFP charge in quoted prices where applicable, and to ensure that they could demonstrate the availability of advertised fares in future. We also told them to prefix fares with the word "from" when not all flights were available at the advertised fare. We asked CAP to inform its media members of the problem with Airline Network.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)