Ryanair hits out at Booking.com over flight cuts

Ryanair has hit out at several online travel agents for taking its flights off their platforms without warning.

The airline said larger sites such as Booking.com, Kiwi and Kayak suddenly removed its flights in December.

It comes after an Irish High Court ruling banned screenscraper Flightbox from gathering Ryanair flight information for online travel agents.

Ryanair said the websites' removal of flights would increase empty seats by 1% or 2% in December and January.

It said that while ticket revenues may also be affected, the move was unlikely to "materially affect" its full-year passenger numbers or profit expectations.

The no-frills airline said it would respond by lowering fares for passengers booking directly through its own website.

In a statement, Ryanair described the online agents as "pirates". It said it would "continue to make its fares available to honest/transparent online travel agents such as Google Flights," which it said "do not add hidden mark ups to Ryanair prices and who direct passengers to make their bookings directly on the Ryanair.com website".

Ryanair said the "welcome removal" of its flights might have been a result of pressure from national consumer protection agencies or new customer verification measures it has taken.

The company has been in a long-running dispute with online booking sites, after the airline launched legal action in the US against Booking.com owner Booking Holdings and its subsidiaries including Kayak, Agoda and Priceline.

Ryanair also said its flights could have been taken off the sites in response to a recent Irish High Court ruling against screenscraper Flightbox.

The ruling granted the airline a permanent injunction, stopping Flightbox from "unlawfully scraping Ryanair.com content" for online travel agents - the process of collecting information and data from websites.

Booking Holdings, which operates Booking.com and Kayak and Kiwi.com said it would not comment on the ongoing legal proceedings between Booking.com and Ryanair in the United States.

The row follows a boom in profits for the airline in November, after it hiked up prices.

The airline said passenger numbers rose 11% to a record 105.4 million in the six months to September, despite average fares rising by 24%.

That helped the carrier to report a near-60% rise in profits for the period to €2.18bn (£1.9bn). Ryanair has reported a jump in profits after pushing up fares in the face of strong demand for summer air travel.

Speaking on Wednesday, the company said the average number of empty seats per flight in December had increased from 8% to 9%.

Ryanair said it flew 12.5 million passengers in December, up 9% from the same period in 2022, despite more than 900 flights being cancelled due to the war in Gaza.