The UK’s advertising watchdog has ruled that Virgin Atlantic’s unqualified sustainability claims made in an advertisement about its flight using 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) were misleading.
A radio advertisement for Virgin Atlantic on 24 November 2023 stated: “On the 28th of November, Virgin Atlantic’s Flight 100 will take to the skies on our unique flight mission from London Heathrow to JFK to become the world’s first commercial airline to fly transatlantic on 100% sustainable aviation fuel”.
Five complainants, who believed the claim “100% sustainable aviation fuel” gave a misleading impression of the fuel’s environmental impact, challenged whether it was misleading and could be substantiated.
In response, Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd t/a Virgin Atlantic explained that the background to the flight referenced in the advertisement was that in December 2022 they were announced as the winner of a competition run by the UK Department for Transport (DfT) to “support industry to achieve the first net zero transatlantic flight on an aircraft using 100% sustainable aviation fuel within one year”.
Virgin Atlantic emphasised that the ad’s wording “… become the world’s first commercial airline to fly transatlantic, on 100% sustainable aviation fuel” mirrored the terms used by the DfT in its competition invitation.
The company said it believed consumers would understand the term “100% sustainable aviation fuel” in the context of the advertisement to be a reference to a type of fuel made from sustainable sources, rather than being fossil fuel based, and which reduced but did not necessarily completely eliminate greenhouse gases.
However, in a statement on its website on 7 August, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that while many listeners would understand from the advertisement that Flight 100 had flown transatlantic using only SAF, a significant proportion would understand the claim “100% sustainable aviation fuel” to mean that the fuel used was 100% sustainable.
“We therefore considered that in the absence of information in the ad which explained that sustainable aviation fuel produced reduced, but still significant, emissions over its full lifecycle, including in-flight emissions, and which explained the ways in which the fuel otherwise significantly adversely impacted the environment, a significant proportion of listeners were likely to overestimate its environmental benefits,” the ASA said.
As a result, the agency concluded that the unqualified claim “100% sustainable aviation fuel” was “misleading” and had breached Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) Code rules 3.1 and 3.2 (misleading advertising) and rules 9.2, 9.3 and 9.5 (environmental claims).
ASA said it had told Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd t/a Virgin Atlantic to ensure that future ads which referred to the use of SAF included qualifying information explaining the environmental impact of the fuel.
