Ryanair made false emissions claims

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has rapped Ryanair’s knuckles after receiving 48 complaints about claims made by the Irish low-cost airline in a series of ads criticising an increase in passenger tax.

Ryanair ran four ads damning then Chancellor Gordon Brown for doubling air passenger duty (APD) to £10. The ASA upheld 34 complaints, including one from AirportWatch, challenging a claim in three of the ads that “Aviation accounts for just 2% of CO₂ emissions”.

It found that while global emissions in the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report were reported as 2%, the claim was misleading because the Chancellor’s pre-Budget report placed the UK’s aviation CO2 output at 5.5%.

Ryanair also failed to provide sufficient evidence to support a further claim, which received two complaints, that the Government had not earmarked a single penny from the APD for environmental projects.

• An ad in The Times by religious pressure group Coherent and Cohesive Voice led to 51 complaints after claiming the Government’s sexual orientation regulations were affecting freedom of conscience and religion.

The ASA upheld claims that the ad misrepresented the proposed changes and misled people over a reference to family-run B&B being forced to rent a room to a transsexual couple.