This week, Ryanair will be cancelling flights that were purchased on websites other than their own for this summer all the way into next March. Their claim is that websites are illegally ‘scraping’ content from their site and making it slow or unavailable for legitimate visitors to ryanair.com. The third-party sites they are targeting include eDreams and Opodo in France, Bravoflight in Switzerland, V-Tours in Germany, Tui in the UK, and Atrapalo in Spain. They also purport that these sites charge more than Ryanair’s rates and don’t adequately notify customers of flight changes. The fares will be credited back to customers on the same card used to purchase them, and the company will also notify the affected consumers by email.
Of course this has created a stir, and the European Commission is checking into whether this violates European consumers’ rights. It appears they’re agreeing in the case of those sites using Ryanair.com illegally, but yet to determine whether this affects travel agents operating in the same network.
On other fronts, Ryanair announced that it will open a number of new flight paths this fall, including one from Malaga to London (Stansted) starting October 28. This path will have a frequency of three flights a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The option for booking these flights is already on the Ryanair site, and of course they will only show available if you choose a flight date after the opening date of that path.
