ASA Ruling on Ryanair Ltd t/a Ryanair Ltd

The Irish-headquartered airline Ryanair ran a series of ads in the United Kingdom on September 2019, boasting of “low CO2 emissions” and of being the "lowest emissions airline," at 66g CO2 per passenger-kilometers flown. The airline justified this assertion with technological and average load factor arguments. On February 5, 2020, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) concluded the company’s claims were misleading, in violation of the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing. ASA considered the CO2 per passenger distance metric appropriate, and that consumers would understand the relative nature of the claim. However, the ASA also found that consumers would find insufficient information in the ads to substantiate that they would reduce their personal CO2 emissions compared to flying with another carrier. It also put in doubt the data references used by Ryanair, and underlined the fact that well-known competitors were absent from the calculation.