Date published: 2007/08/22
The BBC says:
Ryanair has been banned from claiming its flight from London to Brussels is faster and cheaper than making the journey by Eurostar.
The claim was misleading because it ignored time taken travelling from city centres to airports, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said.
Ryanair's advert compared its 70-minute flight with a 131-minute train journey.
But travelling from the heart of London and Brussels would add one hour and 45 minutes to the journey, the ASA said.
And costs for those journeys to and from airports at both ends of the journey meant that claims Ryanair's service was cheaper were also misleading.
Ryanair defended its position, saying that time and costs involved in getting to an airport or railway station were "irrelevant" as they applied to both modes of transport.
In a statement, the airline added that "no stupid ruling" from the ASA could hide the success of the airline.
"Only the very rich or the very slow waste their time on Eurostar," it said.
Ryanair's main London base, Stansted airport, is about 25 miles outside the centre of the capital while Charleroi airport is some 28.5 miles outside of Brussels.
"We considered that many readers would not be aware of the locations of the airports and additional costs incurred," the ASA said.
Ryanair was also found to have made inaccurate claims when it said that Ryanair's flights on the route were more punctual than Eurostar's service.
The budget airline was told by the ASA to remove all the claims from its adverts.
The ASA is taking the piss. Everybody knows full well you need to get to and from airports, and that that is often the most expensive and most time-consuming part of the procedure. Indeed, this is one of the main reasons that people don't fly even more than they do already. Has the ASA managed to find a single (evidently very stupid) passenger who is unaware of this? And the ASA is taking a very London-centric view of the world. Sure, if you happen to live a couple of tube stops from Waterloo (or, from November, St Pancras) then the Eurostar option looks very attractive. But from East Anglia, for example, getting to Stansted is easier and quicker than getting to Waterloo (but that will change come St Pancras). All in all, this ruling from the ASA smacks more of political posturing than anything else (the UK ruling elite have decided that trains are holy and planes are unholy).
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