Ryanair Fined $301M Over 'Abusive Strategy' To Limit Ticket Sales By Online Travel Agencies

Speaking of Italy's competition authority , it has fined Ryanair $301 million for abusing its dominant market position to limit sales of tickets by online travel agents. The Guardian: The authority said Europe's largest airline had "implemented an abusive strategy to hinder travel agencies" via an "elaborate strategy" of technical obstacles for agents and passengers to make it difficult for online travel agents to sell Ryanair tickets and instead force sales through its own website.

The fine related to Ryanair's conduct between April 2023 and at least until April 2025, the authority said on Tuesday. It said Ryanair had prevented online travel agents from selling tickets on its flights in combination with other airlines and services, weakening competition. Ryanair said it would immediately appeal against the "legally flawed" ruling.

Excellent news

[Anonymous Coward]

There is hardly a more disgusting scum among the scum who is allowed to pollute the skies over Europe.

Go broke next year, fucktards.

Re:

[Luckyo]

It's a growing and highly profitable airline.

Re: Excellent news

[LindleyF]

This is the one that charges 50 bucks to print your boarding pass at the airport right?

Re:

[Luckyo]

This is the one that is dirt cheap, but charges you extra for pretty much everything.

As a result, it's very popular, but every once in a while you get an idiot who doesn't understand what he's dealing with and he has to print a boarding pass at an airport, wants food and drink on his three hour flight, wants to have a "flying experience", etc.

There are plenty of national carriers that offer all that and more for free. As long as you pay way more for your ticket. Ryanair is for people who want to get from po

Re:

[mjwx]

There is hardly a more disgusting scum among the scum who is allowed to pollute the skies over Europe.

Go broke next year, fucktards.

Sadly, travel agents, especially online ones make Michael O'Leary look like a saint.

I find it difficult to find a dog to back in this fight. On one hand you've got an airline that is the exemplar of everything wrong with modern air travel, on the other hand an industry dedicated to be an obstructive middleman, raising prices, criminal activity (travel agencies are often done for collusion and often reported for coercing airlines and hotels for exclusivity, favourable pricing, so on and so forth). The big

Need to tax Aviation Fuel

[stooo]

There is quasi no tax on Av fuel, and this needs to change.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Externality [wikipedia.org]

Re: Need to tax Aviation Fuel

[LindleyF]

There is in the US. It pays for ATC.

Re:

[stooo]

That is like saying: car fuel tax pays for the red light, but not for the road, not for bridges, not for the cops, not for all other externalities and infrastructure, etc...

Re: Need to tax Aviation Fuel

[LindleyF]

Well, it is an oversimplification, but to claim there's no tax on aviation fuel is wrong. Some details here. https://www.faa.gov/about/budg... [faa.gov]

I have no idea how Europe does it.

Re:

[stooo]

Technically, you're right.
But it's just laughably too low, compared to car gas tax.
Same is US and EU.

The Right Thing

[MrNJ]

I hope RyanAir does the right thing - discontinue all business with Italy.
The pissant bureaucrats across the globe need to be taught to stop meddling with private entities (exceptions for public safety notwithstanding)
And if they hate this particular airline's business methods, go ahead, invest their own money and start their own airline with blackjack and hookers.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Yeah, gotta stick up for the big corporations. Fuck consumers and the governments advocating for them. God that boot leather tastes sooo goood. SOOO GOOOD. Slurp slurp slurp.

You are pathetic.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

start their own airline with blackjack and hookers.

And this is exactly why Ryanair will not discontinue business with Italy and we have seen it time and time again. Have any of the big tech companies exited the EU after all their rules and rulings? Hell no, they go crying to big daddy US government to bully them and write their own protective laws for themselves.

So when the companies themselves don't even buy into your anti-regulatory stance that shows me they acknowledge such rules are just another price of doing business, because they are. Regulations a

Re:

[alvinrod]

Ryanair wouldn't care about third parties selling tickets for them if they weren't involved in some kind of fuckery of their own. If they want to subsidize certain routes, etc. to draw in customers that's their own business, but Turing around and getting upset at someone else for trying to take advantage of that subsidy isn't any of their business either. While I don't think they're at all obligated to make it easy or possible for any third party to do that, they could solve the problem completely by not en

Re:

[ZorroXXX]

Why the hell do you think companies have any rights other than what politicians allow them to do?

Which Don?

[SlashbotAgent]

Which Italian mafia member will be getting all that money?

RyanAir ...

[PPH]

... the Microsoft of the skies.

On middlemen

[gurps_npc]

Middlemen used to serve a real purpose. When Travel Agents started they compiled information from all the airlines. But we have the internet now, which does the same. When Car dealerships started they ensure you had a qualified place to service your vehicle. But there are so many car repair places now and most are well qualified. Phone stores sell real services, not just phones and general tech stores generally do not offer those services - even today.

But times have changed. Think about the kind of thi

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

I think while way way less relevant today that the human travel agent has at least justified itself more than the 3rd party travel booking sites. Back when your places like Travelocity and Priceline were coming along it was the fact that the pricing was better, you could score a cheap deal you couldn't get elsewhere and the fact most airlines and hotels didn't have robust online systems.

Now the companies themselves are well aware of, in partner with or sometimes outright own those 3rd party sites so the pr

Re: On middlemen

[Strider-]

Iâ(TM)m forced to use a specific travel agent for my corporate travel by policy. They are the most useless wastes of oxygen I have had the misfortune of dealing with. 90% of the time I wind up doing their job for them, finding better routine, avoiding known problematic airports (especially in winter) and finding flights that are more beneficial for me.

Plus, when things inevitably go sideways during travel, because Iâ(TM)ve booked things through a travel agent, those useless idiots are the ones tha

Joe Biden was working on a lot of stuff like this

[rsilvergun]

Was being the operative word. Thanks to America's corrupt supreme Court it took years to start building up those cases because they needed to be ironclad and locked in. You can imagine what happened to all those cases can't you...