EU praises Scandinavian Airlines’ websites

SAS Scandinavian Airlines’ websites have been highly praised by the European Commission. Following an extensive investigation, the Commission concluded that customers booking flights on SAS’s websites feel assured that their rights as consumers are well safeguarded.After introducing a higher level of consumer protection in Europe under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive from 2005 and the review of the “Rules for the operation of air services in the Community” (known as the “third package”), the European Commission believed that it was time to perform a “health check” of airlines’ and travel agents’ ticket selling websites. The aim was to determine compliance with consumer protection rules. Subsequently, a comprehensive 14 point checklist, which was deemed to be fundamental to guaranteeing consumer rights, was prepared in cooperation with the industry.

Examples of the information investigated included: that taxes and fees are included in ticket prices, that the terms and conditions of the tickets are clearly stated, that there is no discrimination in fare pricing based on nationality, the place of residence, etc. and that it is clearly stated which flights are non-stop services. The investigation also looked into information regarding the airline’s contact details and complete information about destination airports and their location.

SAS was one of 16 airlines that were deemed to have fully met all requirements concerning passenger rights. The announcement was made today in Brussels where the results of the investigation were presented.

“This is a gratifying result, not only because it gives us an official stamp of quality, but also because we view it as approval of the work we have performed at SAS to make our websites as functional and reliable as possible for our customers,” says Lars Sandahl Sørensen, Senior Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer. “For the EU to acknowledge and highlight this makes us very proud.”

SAS Scandinavian Airlines has a total of 30 websites in 14 different languages. SAS subsidiaries Blue1 and Estonian Air’s websites also meet all of the EU requirements.

To read the EU’s press release, please go to:
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/783&type=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en