Southwest is known as the airline company offering one way tickets for the low low price of $59. Well, apparently the U.S. government has decided that those prices are too good to be true. They have fined Southwest $200,000 for false and deceptive advertising. The U.S. Department of Transportation contests that though Southwest claimed to offer flights starting at $59, there were infact no seat offered at that price. Southwest had been previously fined $100,000 for a previous offense similar to their current one. That fine though was suspended.
The U.S. Department of Transportation explained that rules governing airfare advertising decree that airlines must offer a reasonable number of seats that they advertise at a special price. Brad Hawkins, a spokesman for Southwest, claims “as soon as we became aware of our mistake, we pulled all incorrect advertisements off the air,” said spokesman Brad Hawkins. They claim that New York, L.A., and Chicago were never suppose to be included in the sale, but a final review of the ad never took place before it was published. They went even further to say that they honored the $59 rate to those cities for those customers who called their sales representatives. What really happened though is Southwest got caught cheating, and now they are just trying to save face.
