Unforeseen: EU starts investigation against Hungarian Wizz Air!

According to the allegations, the Hungarian low-cost airline, Wizz Air, potentially mislead its customers concerning its environmental claims. Therefore, the European Commission and EU consumer protection authorities began an investigation against the airline and 19 other ones.

Is Wizz Air in trouble?

“The action follows concerns raised by European consumer organisation BEUC and is led by watchdogs in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain, but the 20 airlines were not identified in a statement published earlier this week”, Business Travel News Europe wrote.

According to airportal.hu, the 20 airlines included are Air Baltic, Air Dolomiti, Air France, Austrian, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Finnair, KLM, Lufthansa, Norwegian, Ryanair, SAS, Swiss, TAP, Volotea, Vueling and Wizz Air.

What happened?

“Following an alert from the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), the European Commission and EU consumer authorities (Network of Consumer Protection Cooperation – CPC – Authorities) sent letters to 20 airlines identifying several types of potentially misleading green claims and inviting them to bring their practices in line with EU consumer law within 30 days”, the European Commission’s official website wrote in the issue in a statement for the press.

The investigation “focused on claims made by airlines that the CO2 emissions caused by a flight could be offset by climate projects or through the use of sustainable fuels, to which the consumers could contribute by paying additional fees.