The advert was headlined "Brussels faster and cheaper" and
compared a one way Ryanair journey for £15 with a Eurostar one way
journey for £27. It claimed that its journey took one hour and 10
minutes, whereas Eurostar's took two hours and 11 minutes.
Ad watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found
that the advert was misleading on both price and speed because it
did not take into account the differences between a train and a
plane journey.
Though the advert specified that Ryanair flew from Stansted
outside London and not to Brussels but to Charleroi, the ASA said
that it could mislead readers.
"Stansted airport and Charleroi airport were located
approximately 40 km and 46 km from the centres of London and
Brussels respectively, and that transfer times were approximately
45 minutes for the former and approximately one hour for the
latter. We noted Eurostar terminals were located in the city
centres," it said in its ruling.
"We considered that readers would not necessarily be aware of
the location of the airports and the extra time they would have to
factor in for the journey. We also considered that people would see
the headline 'Brussels faster' as referring to the overall journey
time from London to the centre of Brussels. We concluded that the
claim was likely to mislead," it said.
The watchdog also said that, for similar reasons, the claim on
costs was misleading because the cost of travelling to the airports
from the city centre were not included, and that the trains had no
such associated costs because their journey was to the city centre
itself.
"We understood that travel from the airports to London and
Brussels city centres would incur a minimum cost of approximately
£8 for each transfer and therefore the journey cost would not
necessarily be cheaper than by Eurostar, where the terminals were
located in the city centres," it said.
"We considered that many readers would not be aware of the
locations of the airports and the additional costs
incurred. We considered that many would consider the
'Brussels... cheaper' claim to refer to the whole-journey cost from
London to Brussels, and that the overall impression given by the ad
was that that journey would always be substantially cheaper by
Ryanair," said the ruling.
The ASA investigated the advert following complaints about the
advert from Eurostar and from members of the public. It found that
the advert erred when it said that Eurostar departed from St
Pancras, which it will not do until later this year, and
misrepresented Eurostar's punctuality by using an out of date
statistic without undertaking any further research.
The ASA instructed Ryanair to remove the claims about speed,
price and punctuality from any future adverts.
