Ryanair: Airline will 'lower fares' after flights removed from online travel agents without warning

Ryanair has announced it will “lower fares where necessary” to encourage passengers to book directly through its own website after it has been hit by the sudden removal of flights from online booking websites. The airline said that, since early December, many of the larger sites such as Booking.com, Kiwi and Kayak have taken Ryanair off their sites.

It said the sudden removal from what it claimed were online travel agent “pirates” was “welcome” but it would affect how well the airline fills its planes. It comes amid a long-running dispute between Ryanair and online booking sites. The airline launched legal action in the US against Booking.com owner Booking Holdings and its subsidiaries including Kayak, Agoda and Priceline.

Ryanair said it was not clear what the reason was behind its removal from the sites, but said it may be down to a recent Irish High Court ruling, which it said granted Ryanair a permanent injunction against screenscraper Flightbox from “unlawfully scraping Ryanair.com content” for online travel agents. Booking.com has rejected Ryanair’s claims and has previously accused boss Michael O’Leary of making “false and misleading” statements about its business.

Ryanair said in a statement on Wednesday (3 January): “Ryanair will respond to this welcome removal of our flights from OTA (online travel agent) pirate websites, by lowering fares where necessary to encourage all passengers to book directly on Ryanair.com where they are guaranteed to always get the lowest air fares without OTA Pirate overcharges, fake contact info, or other pricing/refund scams. In the meantime, Ryanair continues to make its fares available to honest/transparent OTA’s such as Google Flights, who do not add hidden markups to Ryanair prices and who direct passengers to make their bookings directly on the Ryanair.com website.”

NationalWorld has contacted Booking.com, Kiwi and Kayak for comment.