Ryanair to cancel passengers' online bookings in 'scraping' row

by Nikki Sandison, Brand Republic 08-Aug-08, 15:45

LONDON - Ryanair plans to cancel hundreds of bookings made through price comparison websites that do not take consumers to its official website.

From August 11 the airline will cancel bookings made through websites which use screen-scraping, which entails lifting details from one website to produce a mirror of the original page on another.

Screen-craping websites allow bookings to be made with Ryanair without ever taking the customer to the airline's official website.

Ryanair claims that these sites' activities are illegal and that passengers using them are being misled into paying additional service charges and handling fees.

It has already taken legal action against Italian company BravoFly, which has now discontinued the practice, and has secured an injunction against German-based V-tours.

Ryanair has also highlighted Opodo.com, Atrapolo.com and OTBeach.com as websites that it plans to take action against.

The airline said that when passengers book through screen-scrapers it puts Ryanair's server under pressure and slows the website down, affecting the experience of other customers.

Passengers whose bookings have been cancelled will be compensated but Ryanair often does not have the contact details for people who use price comparison sites to let them know not to turn up at the airport.

The Association of British Travel Agents said that Ryanair was being "foolish" and "unreasonable".

Comments

Brian Millar - 09/08/2008

Ryanair are complaining that customers buying their stuff are using their bandwidth? Unbelievable. Next they'll be complaining that passengers are causing their planes to become all crowded.

Stuart Kilroy - 11/08/2008

i can understand Ryanairs concerns but penalising the consumer is not the way to rectify the situation....

Adam Kirby - 11/08/2008

Genius. Absolute genius. The only sound of scraping I hear is that of barrels, as Reilly yet again vies for the Most Charmless CEO in the World award by blaming his prisoners...no, sorry, I meant passengers...for costing him money. If it wasn't for all those footloose fuckers wanting to fly to some dismal ex-Warsaw Pact aerodrome at 5 o'clock in the the morning, they could really make some decent coin, couldn't they? Jesus.

Matthew Drury - 11/08/2008

Imagine the status meeting with the online aquisition team after this happened. Volume ?! where did that go then. Bet H2 targets are looking fruitful.