Ryanair dismisses ticket 'propaganda'

AIRLINE TICKETS:A ROW has broken out between Ryanair and an online travel agency over the results of a survey indicating that a substantial majority of people believe the airline was wrong to cancel tickets booked on sites other than its own.

Last August Ryanair said it would not honour tickets for flights not booked on Ryanair.com, alleging that third-party bookings, a practice it calls screenscraping, were in breach of its terms and conditions. It also accused other sites of in some cases charging hidden mark-ups of up to 300 per cent on its ticket prices.

According to a survey for Ebookers.ie, 75 per cent of people disagreed with the move and 70 per cent said Ryanair should allow other travel agents to sell its flights.

Ryanair accused Ebookers of manipulating the survey “to help with their propaganda”.

The airline’s head of communications, Stephen McNamara said: “Screenscrapers are the equivalent to ticket touts and should be treated as such.”

In response, Stephen Rice of Ebookers.ie said the iReach survey of 1,000 travel consumers was independent. “Ryanair might not like this statistic, but it is coming directly from their customers – the Irish people.”