Ryanair says Swiss OTA ruling has "no practical impact"

Ryanair (FR, Dublin International) has dismissed a recent decision by the Swiss Supreme Court to allow online travel agency (OTA) lastminute.com to sell Ryanair tickets on its OTA platforms. Ryanair says last week's Swiss decision will have "no practical impact" as European Union (EU) law entitles airlines to determine their own distribution models and to protect their websites by contractual terms of use.

As recently reported by ch-aviation, lastminute.com subsidiary BravoNext SA won a 15 year legal battle against the Irish low-cost carrier who was trying to stop the OTA reselling its flight tickets. The court said the lastminute.com business did not infringe any intellectual property rights or any contractual obligations towards Ryanair and could continue selling Ryanair tickets. Other lastminute OTA subsidiaries, including volagratis.com, rumbo.es, weg.de, and bravofy.com were also covered in the ruling. For its troubles, Ryanair was also ordered to pay court costs of approximately CHF49,000 Swiss francs (USD54,000 dollars).

In an April 18 statement, Ryanair highlighted the EU law and added that the Irish Supreme Court has ruled that the terms of use of the Ryanair website are governed by Irish law. "Accordingly, Ryanair confirms it will retain its direct to customers distribution model," the statement said. "Notwithstanding the wealth of jurisprudence confirming a business’ right to determine its own distribution model, lastminute insists on reselling Ryanair’s flights without having any commercial agreement to do so." Ryanair referred a 2022 Paris Court of Appeal decision that required lastminute.com and its subsidiaries stop selling Ryanair tickets and ordered lastminute.com to pay damages for "free-riding" on Ryanair's website.

Ryanair sells tickets to customers via its own distribution platform and has initiated legal campaigns against unauthorised resellers who scrape data from Ryanair's website and on-sell flights tickets, frequently with a small markup. "Where a booking appears to have been made through a third-party travel agent who has no commercial relationship with Ryanair, the booking may be blocked," says Ryanair's website." Ryanair also says OTAs frequently do not provide the airline with a passenger's contact or payment details, all of which need to be resolved before a passenger flies for safety and security purposes.