Meglena Kuneva, European Consumer Commissioner, mentioned the four during a speech in Brussels about a crackdown on web pricing.
She said: ‘They have made very significant commitments or in some cases have introduced already sweeping changes on core issues. They are now part of a list of industry leaders who are committed to take forwards a new process to maintain high standards.’
The Commissioner’s speech outlined the results from a detailed EU investigation of airline websites to crack down on misleading advertising and unfair practices.
‘All of this work is about tackling the plague of hidden charges, pre-ticked boxes and nasty surprises in the small print of airline websites,’ she said.
The Commission's first investigation in 2007, which looked at 400 websites, found issues with 137 airline websites and 115 were corrected.
A further ‘health check’ was carried out in March this year, looking at 67 top airlines.
This found a dozen continued to give ‘real cause for concern’, while ‘still too many airline websites’ do not fully comply with consumer law.
However, 52 of the 67 websites recently surveyed have either been given a complete clean bill of health by the initial study, or in the follow-up consultation the airlines immediately responded with clear commitments to correct.
SAS, Virgin Atlantic, bmi and TUIfly are among the 16 airlines meeting all the standards of the health check and giving a commitment to maintain their web pages at this level.
Kuneva said illegal practices were widespread in 2007 but now there has been a ‘step change in the level of compliance’.
See also:
Greater transparency promised for passengers (31/10/2008)
EP votes in favour of new transparency rules (10/07/2008)
Consumers still being misled by online pricing (09/05/2008)
ABTA urges OFT action on Ryanair (28/02/2008)
OFT takes action over misleading prices (11/05/2007)