Ryan Air cancels 3rd party bookings

ByLaurel Papworth

eBay makes more money from it’s APIs than it does from onsite auctions. So does SaaS Salesforce. So does Amazon. Apparently RyanAir is choosing not to do that: Ryanair blocks ‘illegal’ bookings Ryanair is to cancel thousands of its own customers’ bookings after they were made through internet travel agents whose activities it says are…

eBay makes more money from it’s APIs than it does from onsite auctions. So does SaaS Salesforce. So does Amazon. Apparently RyanAir is choosing not to do that:

Ryanair blocks ‘illegal’ bookings

Ryanair is to cancel thousands of its own customers’ bookings after they were made through internet travel agents whose activities it says are illegal.

The airline is targeting price comparison websites on which you can buy Ryanair flights without having to go directly to the Irish firm’s site.

Ryanair says this is against its terms and conditions, and the technology used slows down its site for other users. (more from BBC)

Here’s a link to the Civial Aviation online community called Airliners.net where you too can join in the discussion.

Suicide, absolute suicide. *waves good bye to RyanAir* If your main reasons for blocking Lastminute.com, Expedia etc is because they slow your site down and their services contravene your terms and conditions, I recommend you invest in speeding your site up and consider changing your T&Cs?

EDIT: my mistake – of course they don’t have APIs. It’s to stop site scraping (what companies do when no APIs are available). So my advice would be, implement APIs and booking tools to distributed sites.

EDIT 2: Here’s the press release – how do you know if you are purchasing from a site scraper or a ‘licenced’ API provider? I guess you don’t so they are asking you to purchase from RyanAir.com only

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4 Comments

  1. The real point of the story seems to be the screen scrapers are grabbing information off RyanAir’s site, and making bookings,but at a higher price.

    So RyanAir is pointing out that people would get a better price by coming direct to their website, and they would rather have people do that.

    Seems fair enough.

  2. Hi Mathew, I would agree, if Ryan Air gave ppl who booked through 3rd party sites a sheet, everytime they checked in, explaining how their fares are set and why they shouldn’t pay exhorbitant luggage fees etc.

    But they are not.

    It’s August, you arrive at the airport with the family to holiday in Europe or Ireland or wherever, with ‘valid’ tickets and you are told, no, you can’t board, they are cancelled, you didn’t buy them through an approved site. You point out that you don’t know what an ‘approved site’ is. Too bad they say.

    Seems fair enough, you say?

    Punishing the consumer to stop 3rd party site sucks. If the ticket is real, and exists in the system and is for an available seat, it’s not the consumers fault (plus they are punished enough by stupidly paying too much).

  3. I agree with Laurel, very little of what Ryanair does has any altruistic tint to it.

    Bear in mind, this is from a company that banned its staff charging mobile phones at work as it was deemed electricity theft

    http://tinyurl.com/6chohq

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