A long-simmering feud between Ireland-based discount airline Ryanair and online booking agencies has flared into the open recently, with agencies such as booking.com, Kayak and Kiwi to stop listing Ryanair in its search results.
Ryanair recently won an Irish High Court ruling against a company that performed ‘screenscraping’ for some of the agencies. Screen-scraping is using digital tools to capture information, such as flight schedules and prices, from another company’s site.
Ryanair says the agencies use the data to offer falsely low prices on Ryanair’s flights and then add fees that make the total higher than would be paid on Ryanair’s own site. It also says that they keep back vital information from the airline, such as passenger email addresses, making it difficult for Ryanair to communicate with passengers.
The outcome of the measures and countermeasures is still to be seen. On the one hand, Ryanair says that less than 2% of its bookings come from the online agencies; on the other hand, some of the agencies have deep pockets, and plenty of other airline seats to sell.
