The report shows that there are "serious and persistent consumer problems" throughout the airline industry as a whole. 1 in 3 websites surveyed have had to be followed up with enforcement action over the last 7 months for breaches of EU consumer law. Over 50% of those websites have been corrected during this time.

The exercise was carried out by the EU Member States' enforcement authorities (the Consumer Protection Enforcement Network – CPC, which came into being at the end of 2006) and was co-ordinated by the European Commission.

The main results show that 1 in 3 of the web sites checked in Sept 2007 required follow up enforcement action for confirmed breaches of consumer law (386 websites checked for 13 reporting Member States, 137 required enforcement action).

Many websites seem to have multiple problems – i.e. breaches of the law on several fronts. The figures for problems found represent the number of times the problem was encountered - and clearly there are more problems than sites, as many sites has several problems. The main findings are set out below.

The biggest problem found concerned the information given on the final air ticket prices (58%). A widely spread practice reported by authorities consists in dividing the final price of an air ticket into different components, using the airfare for advertising purposes and so attracting consumers to a given ticket selling site with what seem cheap flights.

For the consumers, the final price to pay when actually booking the ticket is generally higher due to a series added charges that vary from so called “airport charges” to handling fees, booking fees or charges related to credit card payments, priority booking, luggage, fuel etc.

Authorities found that websites did not always contain sufficient information concerning the actual availability of seats and/or the conditions attached to the advertised prices (15% of the total of findings). Particularly attractive offers are often used to lure consumers into certain sites only to discover that no seat could be booked to the promotional tariff or only exceptionally.  

The countries that participated in this first joint exercise are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Sweden.