On Thursday, the US Department of Transportation announced that Southwest Airlines is being fined $200,000 for false advertising claims in its television commercials. According to the regulator, the airline had failed to deliver with their promise in their television ads aired last October about offering flights from Atlanta to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles for just $59. The Transportation Department stated that the airline did not make seats available at the advertise price, and as such, have violated rules on advertising airline fares.
Aside from the $200,000 fine, the airline is also being ordered to pay a hundred thousand dollars extra as it was noted that Southwest has been suspended last year for a similar offense.
The Associated Press reported that last year, Southwest had ran a series of ads on eight stations in Atlanta that had a narrator announcing to television viewers, "Discover amazing low sale fares (of $59) to places like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago."
The Transportation Department said the airline industry had long known that they must have a reasonable number of available airline seats at a price as advertised in their ads as part of rules governing fare advertising. The department said that upon checking, it found that Southwest do not have seats for $59 to the cities that it had mentioned in the ads on any of the travel dates as advertised.
Southwest had responded to the regulator, insisting that it was all a mistake, AP said. According to Southwest, the three cities mentioned in the ads were never intended to be part of its Atlanta fare sale, and it just happened that the city pairs have wounded up in the advertisement after a flawed review of its ad copy.
Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins said, "As soon as we became aware of our mistake, we pulled all incorrect advertisements off the air."
The airline added however that while they do not offer the promo in the city pairs, they did honor the $59 far to the three cities for customers who have called its reservations center to asked about the ad price.
