Ryanair to cancel ‘screen scraper’ bookings

THOUSANDS of Ryanair passengers who book flights with the airline through intermediary websites face travel chaos from next Monday after being warned that they will be not be allowed to fly.

Ryanair announced that it will identify, cancel and refund all bookings made through so-called screen scraper websites from the start of next week.

It is estimated that an average of 1,000 travellers booked on Ryanair flights each day could be affected by the measures.

“They won’t be flying,” warned Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary.

Speaking at a press conference in London, Mr O’Leary insisted that the airline was entitled to cancel such bookings. “We want to cause as much chaos for the screen scrapers as possible,” he said.

He also stressed that the airline was entitled to deny boarding to passengers who had booked flights via such websites.

The airline is taking a get-tough stance against websites that automatically lift flight details and prices from Ryanair’s own website. Ryanair claims that such activity is unlawful and in breach of the airline’s own terms and conditions for the sale of tickets.

Mr O’Leary said Ryanair’s terms and conditions had been revised to allow it to cancel bookings not made on its own website.

However, Ryanair has promised to refund the basic cost of the flight to the intermediary website, but warned passengers they would have to recoup any other money from the websites themselves.

Many popular websites like lastminute.com (which do not list Ryanair prices) offer customers a comparison of costs between airlines and can also be used to book flights. Others, such as On the Beach Holidays, BravoFly, Atrapalo and Tui Travel, offer similar services and charge small administration fees to customers who purchase tickets.

A Ryanair spokesman said the new policy was needed because of the increasing number of problems caused by indirect bookings.

He complained that customers were being charged more via such websites than booking directly with Ryanair. The airline has also blamed recent slowdowns with the airline’s own website on the activity of screen scraper websites.

“In recent weeks genuine passengers using Ryanair’s website have been suffering long processing times and slower access because of the huge volume of information being downloaded from our website by these screen scrapers all over Europe,” said the spokesman.

Ryanair is taking legal action against a number of websites for breach of copyright and breach of its website’s terms of use.

Although Ryanair claimed that Irish-owned website BravoFly had recently agreed to discontinue offering its flights, the BravoFly website yesterday was still comparing the airline’s prices with other low-cost carriers.

It is understood that Ryanair has filed legal proceedings against BravoFly and its parent company.

The airline also recently secured a court injunction against V-Tours to prevent them from screen scraping Ryanair’s website in Germany.

Ryanair said it would attempt to contact passengers via email to warn them. However, in many cases, the airline claims the supplied email address on the booking is that of an agent rather than the passenger.