'Sexually suggestive' Ryanair ads banned by watchdog

Britain's Guardian newspaper has apologised for running advertisements for budget airline Ryanair after the UK's advertising watchdog banned them for being sexist.

The series of ads featured female flight attendants in lingerie with the slogan "Red Hot Fares & Crew".

Thousands of people signed an online petition led by a cabin crew worker against the advertising campaign launched last year, while the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) received 17 formal complaints.

It concluded the ads for the Irish carrier, which had appeared in national newspapers, were likely to cause "widespread offence".

One image, entitled "Ornella February" and showing a model pulling down her underwear with her thumb, was especially "sexually suggestive", it said.

Ryanair, which has courted controversy in the past, argued that the promotion used images from its 2012 cabin crew charity calendar which staff members had volunteered to produce.

But the ASA said it "considered that most readers would interpret these images, in conjunction with the text 'Red hot fares & crew!!!' and the names of the women, as linking female cabin crew with sexually suggestive behaviour."

More than 5000 people had signed up to support an online campaign against the advertising, led by a flight attendant named only as Ghada.

On the petition at change.org, she wrote, "I'm a member of cabin crew. I love my job and take it seriously, so I was disgusted to see this Ryanair ad which basically portrays cabin crew as glamour models.

"My work colleagues, many of whom are male, work hard with me to ensure the safety of our passengers.

"Safety is our number-one priority, not the brand of our underwear... No other profession would get away with depicting women in this way."

The Guardian newspaper, one of the publications that ran the ads, apologised for publishing them.

"The advert in question – which also ran in other quality newspapers – appeared in some editions of the Guardian in error due to a systems breakdown that normally allows us to vet adverts before they are printed," a spokeswoman said in the paper. "We regret that it caused offence to some of our readers and we apologised personally to those who complained about it at the time."

Ryanair sparked outrage in 2009 when chief Michael O'Leary said that passengers could be charged to use toilets on its planes, a statement he later admitted was a publicity stunt.

In 2008 the ASA banned an advertisement for the airline that showed a model dressed as a schoolgirl and the strapline "Hottest back to school fares".

AFP