Having refused to take meaningful action on climate change for 30 years, airlines are still encouraging dangerous growth in sales using advertising to promote cheap flights to far-away holiday destinations and short shopping trips to cities across the world. Based upon 2014-2015 figures, UK airlines spent around £260 million per year on promotion and advertising. After the industry was forcefully brought to a halt at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, travel agencies and airlines are now again promoting “business-as-usual” travel despite the massive threat this presents to public health and the climate.
Airlines have also quickly grasped the need to use “green” messaging in their advertising - typically by promising carbon offsetting schemes - in order to appeal to increasingly climate-conscious people. But the problem is, offsetting doesn’t work. A study for the European Commission found that only 2% of schemes had a high likelihood of actually working to cut additional emissions. During the final game of the Euros 2020 football championships, viewed by at least 30 million people worldwide, Qatar Airways “Fly Greener” ads were featured on Wembley stadium’s pitch side. These ads were deemed to be highly misleading, due to the company’s absence of credible green credentials, on which ground a complaint was sent to the UK Advertising Regulating Authority (ASA).
In 2020, the budget airline RyanAir was accused of greenwashing and asked to take down one of its adverts claiming to be “Europe’s lowest fares, lowest emissions airline”. The company was in fact ranked among the EU’s top 10 carbon emitters in 2019. In Autumn 2021, Badvertising submitted a joint complaint to the advertising regulator regarding misleading greenwash adverts by EasyJet in the run up to the COP26 climate summit.