Etihad exaggerated benefit of business upgrade

Advertising watchdogs have upheld a complaint against Etihad from a passenger who bought a business upgrade but received an inferior seat to the one advertised by the airline

The Abu Dhabi-based carrier had sent an email in January inviting passengers to upgrade to its Business Studio, a photo of which was included in the message.

However, a passenger complained to the Advertising Standards Authority after being sold a seat in the airline’s older Business Class, which was not as spacious or as private at its more modern Business Studio.

In its defence, Etihad said it operated a mixed fleet of aircraft, some of which featured its older Business Class product instead of Business Studio, but it claimed this include many identical features. All seats converted to full flat beds, every seat had aisle access and passengers had access to on-demand menus, it said.

Etihad added that it was industry practice to include the latest product in advertising. Prior to booking, however, customers were made aware of the aircraft and equipment being operated and the cabin seat product being offered.

It said that when the complainant clicked on the automated email presenting the option to bid for an upgrade on up to three sectors of their itinerary, they were presented with an offer screen with a fuller explanation of the flight sectors available for upgrade bids and details of the specific cabin products available including Business Studio and Business Class products.

It said it did not think the images of the Business Class product misrepresented or exaggerated the product.

However, the ASA said that Business Studio’was a superior product and the original email had not indicated that there were different business upgrade options, one of which was superior to the other.

"In the absence of further clarification or qualification, we considered a consumer’s impression would be that the seat featured in the email would closely resemble the one they were bidding on and would subsequently receive.

"We noted the complainant maintained that they had purchased the upgrade on the understanding they would receive the Business Studio product as was represented to them in the email they received and that they believed the image had been enhanced to make the product appear more spacious.

"We further considered that, while consumers would be aware that older aircrafts did not carry some of the modern features of newer aircrafts, they should still be able to achieve a broadly similar experience as represented to them in the airline’s advertising.

"We considered that the further images supplied to us by the advertiser showed that the Business Class cabin was not as spacious and private as was implied by the image on the landing page.

"Therefore we considered the ad exaggerated the benefit of purchasing a Business Class cabin product."

Etihad was banned from repeating the ad and told to ensure that its future advertising did not exaggerate the benefit of the product.