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Ryanair Bids to Become Worst Airline in the World

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

Independent.ie, Ryanair travellers may lose bookings.

If this article is to be believed, the experience that Delta gave me by mistake (Delta Airlines Canceled Three of Our Four Tickets for No Discernable Reason) is about to be visited on 1,000 Ryanair passengers per day — on purpose. (Spotted via Slashdot, Airline Cancels All Flights Booked Through Third Party Systems.)

The airline yesterday said it would annul all bookings made through third party websites. In a move described as “totally unreasonable” by the Consumers’ Association, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said the new policy would apply to anyone travelling after next Monday.

The hardline stance affects anyone who booked their Ryanair flights through websites like lastminute.com, v-tours, tui and Opodo.

About 1,000 people use these websites to book Ryanair flights every day, which means 20,000 passengers will be affected by the clampdown if bookings are made an average of 20 days in advance.

Ryanair will give refunds to all of the websites involved, Mr O’Leary said, but passing on those refunds to intending passengers would be a matter for the websites.

“We want to cause as much chaos for the [websites] as possible,” he said.

Is the airline about to go bankrupt? Would any lesser reason cause an airline to hurt its customers in this manner?

I would guess that Ryanair argues it can rescind the tickets because, just being e-tickets, they’re not real contracts. I wonder how long that legal theory will survive this sort of behavior.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on August 11, 2008 (boomark / email).