The European Commission has found that a large number of European airline websites contain irregularities and may be misleading consumers.
Led by European Consumer Protection Commissioner Meglena Kuneva, the investigation, or “sweep”, found that more than half of those sites encountered had problems.
A total of 447 websites across countries including Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, Norway and Belgium were looked at, and no fewer than 226 of these were found to have problems. UK sites were not included in the sweep.
Some of the worst performing countries were Belgium, where 46 out of 48 websites had problems, Italy (nine out of 11 sites) and Finland (20 out of 30 sites). There were no irregularities with any websites in Austria, Cyprus or Greece.
The commission focused on three problem areas: clear pricing (which should clearly indicate taxes and booking fees), availability of offers (which should include limitations of the offer), and fair contract terms (which should not include unfair practices such as attaching mandatory insurance to an offer).
