Bunhill: Flight of truth

I HEAR of a bit of a crash landing for Truth at London City Airport. The Advertising Standards Authority has just rapped the Docklands airport for its boast that it is '20 minutes from the West End'. It was also criticised for claiming in its summer poster advertisements that it ran services to Belfast, Stockholm and Frankfurt - when it didn't.

Road travel to the airport from the centre of London has been sped up by the opening of the Limehouse Link road in May. But 20 minutes? I can only assume the copywriters did their research in the small hours of Sunday morning.

Bill Charnock, managing director of the airport, stands by the claim, insisting that it is perfectly possible 'from some parts of the West End'. He says he won a pounds 20 wager from the last journalist to challenge him on the subject, who somehow ended up doing the trip in an embarrassing 18 minutes.

Caroline Crawford of the ASA, tells me: 'We haven't given them specific advice as to what would be a reasonable time (to quote in their advertising), although the AA have said it would take at least 28 minutes. We'd expect them to come up with a reasonable figure and not just what one taxi-driver had professed to do it in.'

(Photograph omitted)