ASA Quango (UK) issues another bizarre ruling

[White Cap]

Ryanair News
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News Release
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

30.01.08
ASA Quango issues another bizarre ruling
(SELLING THOUSANDS OF £10 SEATS IS “MISLEADING”)

Ryanair today (30th Jan) criticised another absurd and idiotic ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority quango. Their latest ruling claims that, even though Ryanair’s advertisement confirmed that its (Lowest Fares from Britain, all-inclusive) £10 seats were “subject to availability” this somehow “suggested wrongly that the quoted price applied to every seat.” Only in the Alice in Wonderland world occupied by this out of touch quango could “subject to availability” imply every seat on every flight.

The ASA quango failed to explain its bizarre conclusion that a £10 fare was available on every seat, when the ad specifically confirms it was “subject to availability.”

The ASA requires Ryanair to include the prefix “from” but competitor airlines such as Aer Lingus and Easyjet continue to exclude it from their advertisements.
Criticising this latest daft and bizarre ruling from the ASA quango, Ryanair’s Peter Sherrard said:

“This is yet another clear example of a ridiculous ruling by the ASA quango whose council must consist of Alice, the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter. Only in the ASA’s fairytale world could someone claim that a fare, which is ‘subject to availability’, should be available on every seat on every flight. Clearly, the ASA needs English lessons as the normal use of the language confuses them. Furthermore, the ASA’s failure to act against competitor airlines highlights its complete bias towards Ryanair.

“Ryanair has come to expect these daft and idiotic rulings from an organisation which recently ruled that a 1hr10 min flight was not necessarily faster than a 2hr 11 min train journey and that a £15 fare was not necessarily cheaper than a £27 fare”.