Background
This Ruling forms part of a wider piece of work on carbon offsetting claims in the air travel sector. This ad was identified for investigation following intelligence gathering by our Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to proactively search for online ads that might break the rules.
Ad description
A paid-for Google ad for the airline Eurowings, seen on 20 December 2025, stated “Travel […] more eco-friendly [sic] thanks to […] CO2-compensation. Travel climate-consciously by offsetting up to 100% of your carbon emissions per flight”.
Issue
The ASA challenged whether the ad gave a misleading impression of the environmental impact of travelling with the advertised airline.
Response
Eurowings GmbH said their Search Engine Advertising (SEA) team had removed all paid search advertising copy containing references to “CO2 compensation” and similar climate-related claims. They had implemented measures to ensure no climate-related ad copy could be served going forward.
Assessment
Upheld
The ad stated consumers could travel “more eco-friendly” and “climate-consciously” because Eurowings offered a carbon dioxide (CO2) compensation scheme and the option to offset up to 100% of a flight’s carbon emissions.
The ASA considered that the overall impression of the ad was that consumers could travel in a way that had a lower environmental impact due to the compensation and offsetting options cited. The inclusion of the term “climate-consciously” reinforced that impression, and consumers would understand from the ad that up to 100% of the emissions from a specific flight, or flights, booked with Eurowings could be fully offset.
Eurowings offered consumers a multi-tiered package named PlanetBlu during the checkout process when purchasing flights through its website. The package gave consumers the option of making an additional payment that would contribute to the use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel and to climate protection projects that were claimed to either avoid or remove CO2 emissions. The amount paid corresponded to the estimated CO2 emissions of the flight(s) being purchased, meaning that the optional payment was calculated with reference to the estimated emissions of a specific flight. However, that the optional payment was calculated by reference to the estimated CO2 emissions of the specific flight did not substantiate that those emissions would be fully offset. We had therefore not seen evidence that consumers could fully offset the emissions from specific flights booked with Eurowings and in doing so, reduce the environmental impact of their flight.
For that reason, we concluded the ad was likely to mislead about the environmental impact of travelling with Eurowings. We welcomed Eurowings’ assurance that the claims had been removed.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation), 11.1, and 11.3 (Environmental claims).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form investigated. We told Eurowings GmbH to ensure future ads did not give a misleading impression of the impact caused by travelling with them, and that they did not state or imply consumers could pay to fully offset the carbon emissions from a specific flight unless they held suitably robust substantiation to support the claims.
