Ryanair’s racy charity calendar has been running since 2008. However, the airline’s 2013 calendar (which, according to Ryanair, raised more than €100,000 for the TVN Foundation, a Polish charity that works with sick children) provoked a complaint regarding specific advertisements run in November and December 2012. This matter does not seem to relate (directly) to the 2014 calendar, for which they have announced record sales with more than 9,000 copies sold in six weeks (see embedded video below).
While issuing praise for the charity side of the work, Judge Amanda Cohen of Spain’s Commercial Court in Malaga sided with certain Spanish consumer and women’s groups which took issue with the airline’s 2012 “Sizzling prices! And sizzling staff!” publicity campaign, which advertised cheap tickets with images of women in bikinis.
Judge Cohen said online advertising of the annual calendars with pictures of flight attendants in bikinis was “discriminatory to women” and made with a “complete disconnection” to the subject matter of the sale of airline fares, local media reported.
She ordered Ryanair leader (and no stranger to controversy) Michael O’Leary to cease the ad campaign in Spain. Ryanair has indicted it will appeal.
OVERTIME
Here is the Making of the Ryanair Charity Calendar 2014.
This year’s charity partner is the Teenage Cancer Trust.
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