Hoover flight

Hoover's free flights fiasco.

Hoover's promotion was launched in August 1992. Customers spending just £100 on any Hoover product would get two free return flights. At first the promotion was to Europe only. Then Hoover upped the ante to include the USA.

A pressure group was formed by Harry Cichy and Sandy Jack, and the BBC Watchdog team sent an undercover reporter in to Hoover's travel agent. The BBC reporter blew the lid off how people were being dissuaded from getting their free air tickets.

Hoover executives lost their jobs. Three members of the pressure group went to Hoover's parent company in Newton, Iowa, the giant Maytag corporation, to attend Maytag's AGM in April 1994. Cichy, Jack and Lee Robertson made national TV in the USA together with articles in The Washington Post and front page on the Des Moines Register. The media were calling it "Hoovergate".

A documentary was made in 2004 on the anniversary of the visit by the group, as part of the Trouble At The Top series – "The Hoover Flight Fiasco", produced by Angela Chan. At one time the only thing flying was writs to Hoover. The fiasco ended up costing Hoover £48 million and the sale of Hoover to Candy group for a reported loss of over £100 million.

Free flight offers have come and gone but the "Daddy" of them all must be the infamous Hoover Fiasco. Sandy Jack died in 2002, Harry Cichy now consults on promotion and PR matters. Lee Robertson is a pub landlord in Devon at the Old Smithy Inn.