THE Office of Fair Trading has attacked Ryanair over its online credit card payment procedures. The OFT's Chief Executive John Fingleton criticised the budget airline's methods in a national daily newspaper, The Independent.

He described the airline's levying of fees for paying by card online as "puerile" and "almost childish", and he reportedly claimed that the carrier was only operating within "the narrow letter of the law".

The claims come at a time when the OFT is investigating airline and agencies over online pricing and advertising. A key concern is "drop-pricing" where travellers only discover the full cost late in the booking process, making it difficult to shop around.

Fingleton reportedly said: "Ryanair has this funny game where they have found some low frequency payment mechanism and say: 'Well, because you can pay with that [the charge is optional'.

A spokesman for Ryanair said the OFT needed to understand that passengers could avoid extra costs such as baggage charges. And it rejected John Fingleton's comments as disappointing and wrong.

Ryanair claimed that there are no hidden fees or charges on the Ryanair.com website; all non discretionary fees and charges are included in all the airline's advertised prices; Ryanair's payment handling fees are discretionary and are free for passengers using the airline's recommended Mastercard debit cards; and that Ryanair's insurance services are purchased by customers on an opt in, not an opt out basis, as wrongly claimed by Mr Fingleton.

"Ryanair fails to understand why it was singled out for these inaccurate criticisms by Mr Fingleton, when its charges policies are copied by high fare UK airlines.

"Perhaps Mr Fingleton's comments are designed to cover over the OFT's failure to take any action against BA's unfair fuel surcharges, the BAA's monopoly pricing or the continuing mis-selling by screenscraper websites across the UK and Europe, who routinely add hidden mark-ups to Ryanair's low fares."