Ryanair's image suffered another dent this weekend with its much-touted online booking system being named the second worst of 46 travel websites surveyed.
The study by Anglo-American research firm Shelley Taylor & Associates accused Ryanair.com of leaving customers stranded online with poor navigation and architecture. Unlike most airlines, Ryanair also fails to let users book a flight directly from the home page. Instead, they have to click into the site.
In the case of promotional fares advertised on the home page, users have to click through a page about fare rules and another about travel periods.
Ms Taylor said the site also fails to give useful traveller resources such as a currency converter or to let users manage an account, a feature available to Easyjet website users.
The airline might take small consolation from the fact that the entire travel field is poor to begin with when it comes to websites. "All online travel sites are guilty of failing to deliver satisfying travel experiences," said Ms Taylor.
"At first, it seemed as if the online travel was coming of age, but the websites really remind me of the first corporate websites in 1997, with a lot of the same problems," she said. "None have anything like the features of the good general retail sites, such as Amazon."
She finds this extraordinary, given that online travel - the single largest category of consumer spending online - has had plenty of time to examine the causes for early dotcom failure and success.
A key downfall of allthe sites is that they feel to deliver an international service for travellers. For example, only 13 of the sites provided prices in more than one currency. Few offer multiple languages.
Few sites provide even basic services in a potentially lucrative area Ms Taylor calls "dynamic packaging", combining together various travel services to get a complete package for a trip.
The best five sites are all American (Expedia, Travelocity, Hilton, Orbitz, and Continental Airlines) with the worst all based in Britain (FlyBe, Ryanair's UK site, Bridge the World, Holiday Autos, and Travel Bag).
