Ryanair to cancel unauthorised third party tickets

Travel agents and consumer groups are responding harshly to Ryanair’s announcement that it would cancel thousands of air tickets purchased by passengers on third-party websites.

The airline has battled against websites that provide price comparisons and then sell tickets for seats on the airline, claiming that the process violates its terms and conditions and is against the law.

The websites are known as “screenscraping” sites, which allow visitors to the site to purchase tickets on a carrier, bypassing the actual airline’s website. It is estimated that sales of this type amount to approximately 0.5 per cent of all bookings made on the low-cost Irish airline.

Beginning Monday Ryanair has said that it will cancel all tickets that have been purchased through these sites, meaning that on each day, thousands of customers will not be getting the seats they thought that had bought.

Last week, Ryanair was successful in getting the Irish “screenscraping” site, BravoFly Ltd, to remove all Ryanair flights from its price comparison service, by legal action. Last month, it was successful in obtaining an injunction against the German website V-tours.

A Ryanair spokesman, Howard Millar, said the carrier was taking legal action against additional websites but also had decided that cancelling the tickets is “a quicker and more effective way of discouraging this unlawful activity”.

Millar added that access to Ryanair’s website was slowed by “scraping” activity, and that stopping it would make it easier for the carrier’s customers to search and book flights more quickly.

www.ryanair.com