Air Malta website cleared by Brussels and declared consumer friendly

An 18-month exercise by the European Commission to ensure that airline websites selling flight tickets are consumer friendly and respect EU laws concluded that Air Malta's website conforms to the required standards and respects EU consumer rules.

Originally, when the first exercise was carried, in 2007, two unnamed Maltese travel websites were found not be EU-compliant and the Commission instructed them to change their selling methods as they were found to be misleading.

According to the first phase of this exercise conducted locally by the Consumer and Competition Division in conjunction with the European Consumer Centre, two Maltese sites were flagged for misleading information.

Brussels said that both sites had an advert promoting thousands, even millions, of free seats but when checked it emerged that there were no free seats available for a whole range of dates. When available flights were found, none of these were completely free.

The Commission always refused to name these websites, even when asked for information by The Times, and only said that it was giving the necessary time to the companies operating these websites to introduce the necessary changes.

Asked yesterday to state whether the two Maltese sites were connected in any way to Air Malta, an EU official declined to comment. But he added that "now it seems that Maltese websites are fully compliant with EU laws".

The Commission said that according to its most recent study concluding its investigation, a "steep change" in airline ticket selling methods is emerging across Europe in terms of compliance with consumer protection rules.

The Commission said that as a result of its enforcement investigation process, 115 airline websites out of the 137 websites investigated have been corrected. Following an additional "health check" process involving independent mystery shopping in March 2009 on 67 major airlines, 52 airlines, including Air Malta, have either been given a "clean bill of health" and undertaken to maintain the same standards or immediately responded to the Commission's consultation with undertakings to remedy outstanding issues.

The health check process checked websites against a comprehensive 14 point checklist, which was previously agreed with the airline industry. The Commission is now working to put in place an industry-wide agreement to provide a level playing field for airlines across the EU and to maintain sites to a high standard.

The EU's investigation focused on three key practices: clear pricing so that the price first advertised on a website should be a final price; availability, to make sure that any conditions attached to the offer, particularly limitations on the availability of an offer, should be clearly indicated; and fair contract terms, meaning that these be clearly indicated, easily accessible and fair.