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Swedes aghast over Ryanair bikini calendar

Sweden's advertising watchdog has been flooded with complaints concerning an advertisement for a calendar featuring scantily clad Ryanair stewardesses.

Swedes aghast over Ryanair bikini calendar

Less than a month after the release of the 2012 edition of Ryanair’s Cabin Crew Charity Calendar, the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman (Reklamombudsmannen-RO) has received 33 complaints about adverts promoting the calendar.

“People think the advertisment is sexist and that it doesn’t belong on a website meant to sell plane tickets,” Advertising Ombudsman Elisabeth Trotzig told The Local.

The wave of complaints lands the Ryanair calendar campaign second only to an ad campaign for the Victoria Milan dating service, which encouraged marital infidelity, in terms of the number of complaints filed with the Ombudsman.

Ryanair now has two weeks to respond to the Ombudsman about the complaints, after which the watchdog will decide how to proceed with the case.

According to Trotzig, the Ombudsman isn’t likely to issue a statement on the case until after Christmas.

Ryanair’s spokesperson Stephen McNamara didn’t seem the least bothered by Swedish complaints over the calendar, a project the airline has carried out annually since 2008.

“Ryanair’s cabin crew calendar has raised €500,000 ($672,000) for charity in just five years and we will continue to support the right of our crew to take their clothes off to raise money for those who need it most,” he told The Local.

In line with previous years, all 10,000 copies of the 2012 edition of the Ryanair swimsuit calendar have been sold.

The resulting €100,000 in proceeds are set to be donated to the organization DEBRA, which helps children with the genetic skin disease Epidermolysis Bullosa, which leads to extremely sensitive and fragile skin.

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UPDATE: Ryanair passenger jet makes emergency landing in Berlin over ‘fake bomb threat’

Polish police said Monday they were investigating a fake bomb threat that forced a Ryanair passenger plane travelling from Dublin to Krakow to make an emergency landing in Berlin.

UPDATE: Ryanair passenger jet makes emergency landing in Berlin over 'fake bomb threat'
A Ryanair flight making an emergency landing

The flight from Dublin to Krakow made the unexpected diversion after a reported bomb threat, German newspaper Bild Zeitung said.

“We were notified by the Krakow airport that an airport employee received a phone call saying an explosive device had been planted on the plane,” said regional police spokesman, Sebastian Glen.

“German police checked and there was no device, no bomb threat at all. So we know this was a false alarm,” he told AFP on Monday.

“The perpetrator has not been detained, but we are doing everything possible to establish their identity,” Glen added, saying the person faces eight years in prison.

With 160 people on board, the flight arrived at the Berlin Brandenburg airport shortly after 8 pm Sunday, remaining on the tarmac into early Monday morning.

A Berlin police spokesperson said that officers had completed their security checks “without any danger being detected”.

“The passengers will resume their journey to Poland on board a spare aeroplane,” she told AFP, without giving more precise details for the alert.

The flight was emptied with the baggage also searched and checked with sniffer dogs, German media reported.

The passengers were not able to continue their journey until early Monday morning shortly before 4:00 am. The federal police had previously classified the situation as harmless. The Brandenburg police are now investigating the case.

Police said that officers had completed their security checks “without any danger being detected”.

“The Ryanair plane that made an emergency landed reported an air emergency and was therefore immediately given a landing permit at BER,” airport spokesman Jan-Peter Haack told Bild.

“The aircraft is currently in a safe position,” a spokeswoman for the police told the newspaper.

The incident comes a week after a Ryanair flight was forced to divert to Belarus, with a passenger — a dissident journalist — arrested on arrival.

And in July last year, another Ryanair plane from Dublin to Krakow was forced to make an emergency landing in London after a false bomb threat.

READ ALSO: Germany summons Belarus envoy over forced Ryanair landing

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