(Finance) – The Irish low-cost airline Ryanair sent a letter to the Antitrustasking to explain “because she let herself be fooled” by Pirate OTAs like eDreams e “because he ignored the recent one sentence of the Court of Appeal of Milan” which states that “Ryanair’s direct sales policy is ‘reasonable’, has led to lower costs and fares and undoubted advantages for consumers”.
The AGCM, in fact, has started a precautionary proceedings against Ryanair for the restriction on the sale of flights by agencies, against which the low-cost airline has appealed to the TAR of Lazio.
Ryanair has signed “Approved OTA” agreements with Loveholidays, Kiwi, TUI, On the Beach, eSky and El Corte Inglés which “guarantee transparent prices for consumers”, to counter the different model of pirate OTAs currently used by eDreams, Opodo and Booking.com, which “envisages illegal digital piracy (screenscraping) from the Ryanair.com website and the increase in airline prices with hidden increases or invented ‘taxes’ that seriously harm Italian consumers”.
In this way the company “continues its campaign for consumer protection” and once again asks the AGCM to “outlaw pirate OTAs” that harm passengers.
“The AGCM case demonstrates that they were deceived by clearly false claims from Pirate OTAs, such as eDreams – he states Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair – particularly when these same claims were rejected by the ruling of the Milan Court of Appeal of January 2024 which found Ryanair’s direct sales policy to be in favor of consumers”.
“We have presented a counter-argument to the TAR of Lazio – explained O’Leary – and we are convinced that they will overturn the sentence, as the Court of Appeal of Milan has already done with the sentence itself”.