Monarch in breach of advertising rules
Monarch has been found guilty of breaching the advertisers’ code after the airline failed to prove that it had a significant number of extra legroom seats available at a lead in price stated in an email ad.
The Advertising Standard Authority investigated after a customer complained that all the extra legroom seats on his flight cost €26.99 even though the airline ad stated prices started at £11.99 each way.
In its defence to the ASA, Monarch stated that its email communications were generic across all its routes and that it couldn’t provide specific information about each route in those emails.
It pointed out that that the price given in the ad was a ‘from’ price, and it did not state it was available on every route.
The airline said that "based on management assumptions", on the week in question, of the 109 scheduled routes on sale, 31 of those routes had extra legroom seating priced at £11.99 or less, which amounted to over 28% of its inventory, and which it felt justified the pricing claim.
Upholding the complaint, the ASA said: "Whilst the ASA considered it was acceptable for Monarch to claim that extra legroom seating was available "from "£11.99" if 28% of their available extra legroom seats were available at that price or less, we were concerned that they had been unable to provide any documentary evidence to support that statement and we therefore concluded that the ad breached the Code. "
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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