Ryanair has secured a permanent injunction in the High Court prohibiting a company from using bot technology to “screenscrape” the airline’s website to provide ticket booking information to online travel agencies.
The practice of screenscraping allows third-party online travel agencies (OTAs) to sell tickets for Ryanair flights despite the airline only officially selling tickets through its own website and mobile app.
According to Ryanair, many of these OTAs significantly overcharge for these flights and customers lose direct access to their flight booking information.
Dara Brady, commenting on behalf of Ryanair, said: “We welcome this High Court ruling which established that this screenscraper is bound by the terms of use of the Ryanair website, which prohibits screenscraping.
“Ryanair has been granted a permanent injunction to stop this unlawful screencraping of Ryanair’s data in breach of Ryanair’s terms of use. The Ryanair website is the only website authorised to sell Ryanair flights.”
He added: “OTAs have for years relied upon screenscrapers (such as Flightbox), fake customer accounts, single-use payment cards and fake customer email addresses to make bookings on Ryanair’s website in breach of the terms of use.
“This can cause huge inconvenience and expense to customers as often OTAs not only overcharge for fares, bags and seats, but they also block customers from managing their bookings or receiving important flight updates from Ryanair (such as online check-in reminders).
“This historic High Court ruling has reinforced Ryanair’s determination to pursue justice for our customers to ensure they get access to the lowest fares, cannot be overcharged by OTAs, and that they have direct access to manage their bookings and to receive up to date flight information.
“Ryanair does not have a commercial relationship with any OTA or screenscraper and we strongly object to OTAs mis-selling our flights and overcharging consumers.”
