Ryanair : Welcomes Irish Supreme Court Ruling On Screenscraper Websites

Ryanair, Europe's favourite low fares airline, today (20 Nov) welcomed an Irish Supreme Court ruling that legal cases taken by Ryanair against screenscraper websites must be heard in Ireland. Ryanair has been engaged in various cases across Europe to prevent customers from being subjected to excessive charges and poor travel experiences as they didn't book directly.

Screenscrapers such as eDreams, Billigfluege, On The Beach and Ticketpoint sell Ryanair flights without transferring the customer to the Ryanair website at any stage of the booking process. Billigfluege, On the Beach and Ticketpoint sought to overturn previous High Court decisions regarding jurisdiction. However, this argument was dismissed by the Supreme Court.

Ryanair has called on these screenscrapers such as eDreams, Billigfluege, On The Beach and Ticketpoint to stop misleading customers with artificially low on-screen flight prices which bear no relation to the total amount that customers end up paying. Ryanair has again identified more cases of these websites offering low-fare flights only for these to end up costing substantially more than the actual fares on Ryanair.com:

Many of these websites continue to cause problems for Ryanair customers and/or fail/refuse to pass on vital information to both customers and Ryanair regarding issues such as flight changes, web check-in, special needs assistance and contact details, which has resulted in missed flights and repeated problems for customers.

Ryanair's Kenny Jacobs said: 

"We welcome this ruling of the Irish Supreme Court which confirms that Ryanair's legal cases against screenscraper websites must be heard in Ireland. The ruling will have no impact on the authorised websites we work with today, over a dozen, who are supplied with Ryanair's product inventory, so as to allow customers to compare airfares. However, many screenscraper sites continue to artificially inflate Ryanair's fares and give a bad experience to customers, particularly those that want to change an element of their booking. We are calling on the EU to intervene and prohibit these practices in the interest of consumers."