16 March 2009

Ryanair Ã¢â¬Ëœfaces failureÃ¢â¬â¢ in legal challenges against online agents

Ryanair is expected to lose legal action against agents in the UK following latest court rulings in Spain and Germany, travel software specialist Multicom believes.

The Bristol-based company, suppliers of online booking software to more than half of UK travel agents, claims a successful ruling in favour of Spanish online travel agency Atrapalo in a Barcelona court in January undermines Ryanair’s position for other pending litigation.

The Spanish court ruled that Atrapalo was entitled to offer Ryanair tickets as part of its normal business activities. The court reasoned that where an airline offers flights through the internet, it forfeits its right to control the subsequent use of the flight information by others, according to Multicom.

The court of appeal in Frankfurt also dismissed a Ryanair appeal against an earlier injunction granted last September in favour of German online company CheapTickets.

The judgement on March 5 means Ryanair is restrained by the injunction from refusing to fly any passengers who have bought tickets via CheapTickets and cannot publicly claim that CheapTickets business is illegal, Multicom said.

Multicom managing director John Howell said: "To date, Ryanair has both threatened and commenced legal proceedings in numerous many jurisdictions - including France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom - against leading independent online travel agencies.

"However, having now considered the evidence, various European courts are beginning to deliver their rulings and it is fast becoming evident that Ryanair's arguments are entirely without legal foundation.

"The rulings have established that the activities of independent online travel agencies are not only legitimate, but play a key role in providing consumers with accurate information and ensuring market transparency, thus facilitating vigorous competition in the markets for both air passenger transport and travel-related services.

"Ryanair's litigious conduct is designed solely to secure and extend its own dominance of the travel market by preventing access to transparent fare prices, terms and conditions and denying consumers the ability to carry out effective cost-comparison."

Multicom claims Ryanair's indiscriminate threat of legal proceedings can only be explained as a strategy designed to cause maximum commercial disruption to all independent online travel agencies.

"Rulings such as these establish the commercial legitimacy of the online travel agency sector," said Howell.

"It is obvious that Ryanair's aim is to eliminate genuine competition, resulting in less choice and higher prices for consumers and ultimately damaging the travel sector as a whole. This is clearly something no European court can countenance."