Consumers are being ripped off, misled and confused by airline websites, the European Commission said yesterday.

It promised to pursue offending companies unless they clean up their sales and marketing practices.

A sweep of more than 100 websites in 13 European countries found that 1 in 3 were breaking the law, by concealing additional charges or misleading the public with promotional offers that were unobtainable.

Offenders caught by the EU’s investigation included Austrian Airlines and Ryanair. The Irish airline has already been the target of an investigation of its online booking practices by Britain’s Office of Fair Trading.

Meglena Kuneva, the EU Consumer Commissioner, said that offending airlines and travel companies could have their websites shut down if they failed to improve.

“It is unacceptable that 1 in 3 consumers going to book a plane ticket online is being ripped off or mislead and confused”, said Ms Kuneva.

“My message to industry is clear, act now or we will act,” she said.

The Commission is taking enforcement action against 137 websites out of a total of 386 which were monitored in the “sweep” undertaken in 13 states. The offending websites belong to 80 companies which have until May 1 next year to make improvements or face proceedings by national authorities that could lead to fines and websites being shut down.

For legal reasons, the Commission did not disclose the companies against which it had taken enforcement procedures. However, the Swedish and Norwegian authorities named several offenders, including Austrian Airlines, the Finnish airline Blue 1 and Ryanair.

The Office of Fair Trading in Britain said it had not taken part in the Commission’s “sweep” as it had recently taken enforcement action against airlines in its own investigation of misleading online pricing.

Ryanair also featured in the OFT’s action which followed a warning in February last year. Six months later the OFT said that it had forced 13 airlines to change their websites to include all fixed, non-optional costs in the prices published on their online booking sites. The carriers including easyJet, bmibaby, Flybe, Thomsonfly, flythomascook, Monarch, Jet2, Globespan, Wizz Air, Sky Europe, Germanwings, Ryanair and Aer Lingus

Airlines depend heavily on websites through which 700 million passenger per year book through.

Problems with bad websites exist across the whole of the industry, including tour operators. Most of the offences relate to misleading pricing, such as a Ryanair site in Norway which deceived customers into paying NK 50 (£5) for priority boarding by including it as a pre-chosen option on its booking form.

Another Norwegian website for Austrian Airlines incorporated a NK100 booking fee that was not included in the website’s advertisement.

Bad practices included the addition of extra charges that were not included in advertisements, such as “airport charges”, booking fees or charges related to credit card payments, priority booking, luggage or fuel. These cases accounted for 58 per cent of the offending websites while 49 per cent related to pre-checked boxes on booking forms which required travellers to expressly decline a service in order to avoid extra payment.

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