AGCM

PRESS RELEASE

AIRLINES: ANTITRUST SANCTIONS RYANAIR WITH 500K+ FINES FOR UNFAIR COMMERCIAL PRACTICES

The airline tally rises to seven with fines totalling nearly one million euros. Alitalia, Blu express, Germanwings and Air Italy as well as Wizz Air and Easyjet have already been sanctioned.

Ryanair is being fined over 500 thousand euros for unfair commercial practices towards consumers. The Antitrust Authority's ruling adds yet another measure to a series of investigations into large and small European airlines, which have been hit with nearly one million euros in fines so far.

The sights of the Authority are set on deceptiveness, weak transparency, inadequacy and even the outright lack of information about ticket prices, which in some cases lack any indication of various predictable and unavoidable fees that are not added in until the moment of credit card payment. Investigations were launched in response to numerous complaints received from consumers and consumer organizations with the support of the Authority's Contact Center.

Five specific Ryanair practices were contested:

1. Deceptive advertising distributed in print and via internet to promote offers that users found to be in fact "unobtainable" (110,000 euro fine).
2. Air fares lacking any indication of various add-on fees (e.g., on-line check-in fees, credit card fees and the VAT applied to national flights) that are added in automatically during the on-line booking process to result in significantly higher ticket prices (220,000 euro fine);
3. Difficulty or outright impossibility of receiving post-sale assistance for ticket refunds (full or partial) in case of flight abandonment, whether for reasons attributable to the airline or by passenger choice, and in specific the necessity of using a toll number or paying high fees (90,000 euro fine);
4. Publication of the general terms and conditions of transport and general information for Italian consumers in the English language (27,500 euro fine);
5. Unjustified additional charges for making changes in dates, times, passenger names or routes or reissuing boarding cards at the airport (55,000 euro fine).

Other airlines fined recently include Alitalia (105,000 euros), Blu express (75,000 euros), Air Italy (55,000 euros), Germanwings (50,000 euros), Wizz Air (55,000 euros) and Easyjet (120,000 euros) for a total of 962,050 euros

Rome – 04^th July 2011