- Ryanair criticizes online agencies
- Flight removal affects seats
- Legal battles and profit surge
Ryanair has criticized several online travel agencies for abruptly removing its flights from their platforms.
The airline reported that in December, larger sites, including Booking.com, Kiwi, and Kayak, abruptly removed its flights.
It follows a prohibition by the Irish High Court on screenscraper Flightbox collecting Ryanair flight data for online travel agencies.
Ryanair projected that removing flights from its websites would add 1% to 2% of tickets in December and January.
The company stated that although ticket revenues might be impacted, the action was not anticipated to have a significant “material effect” on its annual passenger figures or profit projections.
In response, the low-cost airline announced a reduction in tariffs for passengers making reservations exclusively via its official website.
The term “pirates”
Ryanair referred to the online intermediaries as “pirates” in a statement. The airline declared that it would “continue to provide its fares to trustworthy online travel agents, including Google Flights, which “do not add concealed markups to Ryanair prices and direct passengers to make bookings directly on the Ryanair.com website,” among others.
The operator of Booking.com, Kayak, and Kiwi.com, Booking Holdings, did not respond to requests for comment immediately.
Ryanair stated that the “welcome removal” of its flights could have been the result of new customer verification measures or pressure from national consumer protection agencies.
An extended legal battle has ensued between the organization and online booking platforms since the airline initiated legal proceedings in the United States against Booking Holdings, the proprietor of Booking.com, and its subsidiaries, which comprise Priceline, Kayak, and Agoda.
The recent Irish High Court verdict against the skyscraper Flightbox led Ryanair to consider flight cancellations.
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The airline was granted a perpetual injunction by the ruling, which prohibited Flightbox from “illicitly scraping Ryanair.com content” for the benefit of online travel agencies. Website scraping is the act of extracting information and data from websites.
The dispute ensues subsequent to a surge in the airline’s profits in November, which was a result of price increases.
In the six months leading up to September, the airline reported a record 105.4 million passengers, marking an 11% increase. This was despite a 24% increase in average fares.
This contributed to the carrier’s period-end profit growth of nearly 60% to €2.18 billion (£1.9 billion). Ryanair has disclosed an increase in profits subsequent to increasing tariffs in response to robust summer air travel demand.
The average number of vacant seats per aircraft rose from 8% to 9% in December, the firm stated on Wednesday.
Ryanair reported carrying 12.5 million passengers in December, a 9% increase compared to the same month in 2022, notwithstanding the cancellation of over 900 flights caused by the conflict in Gaza.
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