About those $59 too-good-to-be-true fares from Atlanta to New York, Chicago or Los Angeles on Southwest Airlines?
Yeah.
They were too good to be true.
The U.S. Department of Transportation on Thursday announced it was hitting Southwest with $200,000 in fines for violating federal rules against deceptive advertising.
None of the $59 fares advertised on eight television stations in Atlanta were available for purchase.
"By advertising fares for which no seats were available at all, Southwest violated the full fare advertising rule and engaged in prohibited unfair and deceptive practices," the agency said in a statement.
In announcing the fine, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said, "DOT's full-fare advertising rules were put into place to ensure that consumers are not deceived when they search for plane tickets. Consumers have rights, and DOT will continue to take enforcement action against carriers and ticket agents when our price advertising rules are violated."
Airlines who run fare sales must offer "a reasonable number of available seats" under the advertised price.
For Southwest, this is the second time in 10 months the Dallas-based airline has been fined by the DOT for deceptive advertising. Last June, the carrier was also fined $200,000 with the contingency that it only had to pay $100,000 if it did not engage in a similar false ad. Now the airline must pay that on top of the $200,000 fine from Thursday.
Southwest said it pulled the ads as soon as it realized the mistake, which the carrier said was in the audio of the TV spot.
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