Ryanair has submitted evidence to a European Commission inquiry into punishing online third-party agents selling tickets at a hefty mark-up.

The low-cost carrier has so far cancelled over 5,000 tickets as a result of its policy to prevent such websites from “screen scraping”, a process by which they buy then sell-on flights from the no-frills carrier’s own website.
Ryanair also claims that screen scrapers were slowing down its website, preventing its usual customers from making bookings, and violating its terms and conditions.

The policy has received criticism from the media and the travel trade after a number of passengers missed holidays as a result, despite Ryanair’s terms and conditions stating that tickets are invalid if bought on any site apart from Ryanair.com.

The European Commission subsequently wrote to Ryanair seeking information on whether the airline was breaking laws on passenger rights.

Ryanair has hit back by announcing it had provided the European Commission with evidence of four websites, Bravofly.com, Edreams.com, Volgratis.com and Wegelo.com, on which the airline’s ticket prices had been inflated by up to 300 percent.

It is expected that Ryanair will continue to cancel tickets bought via some third party websites for the foreseeable future.
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