ADVERTISING:RYANAIR HAS fallen foul of the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over an ad which featured a bikini-clad model and a promise of being able to jet away to the sun.
The ASA took exception to the newspaper advertisement which urged readers to “book to the sun now”, though it ran in February and March when there was not much sun around and certainly none for sunbathing in places like Oslo, Derry and Glasgow. Ryanair sought to argue that many of these destinations had significant amounts of daytime sunshine, but the ASA was having none of it.
It stated that the advertisement was misleading because the impression was given that the promotion included destinations warm enough to sunbathe in swimwear though none of the 11 destinations involved met the criteria.
The ASA has banned the ad, but it is unlikely to bother Ryanair which has repeatedly breached the codes of an organisation it describes in typical fashion as an “unelected, self-regulating quango”.