Yesterday’s attack on Ryanair by the Office of Fair Trading was ‘disappointing and wrong’, the budget airline has insisted.
Defending its controversial charging practices, Ryanair said there were no hidden fees or charges on its website and that all non-discretionary charges were included in the airline’s advertised prices.
The Dublin-based airline is particularly angry at the OFT’s attack on its payment handing fees, which are levied on all flights except those booked with a pre-paid Mastercard.
Such charges were ‘puerile’ and ‘almost childish’, OFT chief executive John Fingleton said in a widely-publicised interview with the Independent newspaper yesterday.
‘Ryanair fails to understand why it was singled out for these inaccurate criticisms by Mr Fingleton, when its charges policies are copied by high fare UK airlines,’ the airline said in a statement.
‘Perhaps Mr Fingleton’s comments are designed to cover over the OFT’s failure to take any action against BA’s unfair fuel surcharges, the BAA’s monopoly pricing or the continuing mis-selling by screenscraper websites across the UK and Europe, who routinely add hidden mark-ups to Ryanair’s low fares.’
Ryanair later moved to escalate the row with the OFT even further by offering one million special £4 ‘Fingleton Fares’ for midweek travel.
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