It was reported to the ASA that in July this year the top section of Jet2.com’s homepage featured a section with an online search form including a yellow "Find flights" button at the bottom.
A grey banner underneath the contained the claim “22KG Baggage Allowance*”.
Beneath, a number of prices for flights were featured, and text in small font below the price column stated “All prices one way including taxes *Charges apply”.
The complainant who contacted the ASA challenged whether the ad “misleadingly implied that 22kg baggage allowance was included in the price of the flight”.
While Jet2.com argued that the ad was followed immediately by an asterisk and highlighted that should a customer wish to buy a flight, the addition of checked baggage would be presented as the first option after selecting the desired flight, the ASA upheld the complaint.
Jet2.com also stated that the ad referred to a 22kg baggage “allowance”, which they believed was accurate, because Jet2.com passengers could have 22kg “allowance” in one bag.
The airline added that they had since made changes to the ad to move the qualification “Charges apply” wording to further up the home page so that it was closer to the main claim “22KG Baggage Allowance*”, but the ASA noted that, while the qualification was moved further up the page so that it was underneath the grey banner, it was still positioned on the far right-hand side of the page and was still in a very small grey font, “and which we considered was still likely to be missed by consumers”.
The ASA did not consider the changes were adequate: “For the reasons set out above, we considered that the ad did not make sufficiently clear that consumers would incur additional charges for the 22kg baggage allowance, and therefore concluded that it was misleading.”
The ad must not appear in its current form again.
The ASA said: “We told Jet2.com to ensure that their ads did not misleadingly imply that luggage allowance was included in the price of their flights if that was not the case.
“We also told Jet2.com to ensure that significant qualifications, such as the fact that consumers would incur additional charges for the checked baggage allowance, were presented prominently and close to the main claim about their checked baggage allowance.”
