The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint about a poster and magazine ad run by Luton Rising, which it deemed painted a misleading picture about Luton airport’s expansion plans and its effects on the environment.

The campaign, in March and April, featured an image of a marshaller signalling to an aircraft and text stating: “If we miss our environmental limits, our expansion will be stopped in its tracks.”

The ad continued: “If London Luton airport breaks the environmental limits set out in its expansion proposal, it won’t mean an apology, it will mean further expansion is stopped. 

“Our unique Green Controlled Growth framework will introduce limits for the airport’s noise, carbon, air quality and road traffic impacts. These would be legally binding, and independently monitored”. 

Complainants, including the Group for Action on Leeds Bradford airport (Galba), challenged whether the ads were misleading because they omitted to mention the Green Controlled Growth Framework did not include emissions from flights, which would increase following expansion.

Luton Rising said the ads were to illustrate that mitigating environmental impacts was central to expansion plans. The campaign stated the framework, which placed limits on noise, air quality, emissions from the airport’s operations and road traffic, would halt expansion if breached or there was a risk of a breach and that this was summarised in the ads.

However, the ASA ruled consumers would understand the main source of emissions from expanded operations would come from additional air traffic movements. 

“They would therefore not expect those emissions to have been omitted from the Green Controlled Growth Framework’s limits,” it said.

The ASA concluded the ads “omitted significant information and were therefore misleading”.

The sanction is the latest in a travel greenwashing crackdown by the ASA and others.

The authority rapped Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and Etihad in December for false claims about the environmental benefits of travelling with them. 

In May last year, Intrepid Travel was told not to use a campaign that used the phrase "planet-friendly small group adventures".

Meanwhile, in May this year, the European Commission gave 20 unnamed airlines a month to clean up their act after identifying many potentially misleading environmental claims.