Ryanair Continue With Crackdown On Screenscraping

Ryanair have continued in their action against company's screen scraping their website by now taking legal action against Bravofly.com.

The action has been taken in the Dublin Commercial Court against Bravofly.com after Ryanair claim requests were made for it to stop screenscraping its website - which according to Ryanair they ignored. The move follows other legal action the airline has taken after it managed to get an injunction against the Vtours group in Germany

Ryanair concentrate primarily on sales made through their own website which account for 98% of the airlines bookings, they have always insisted that they are not interested in third parties selling their seats on their own websites. This differs from one of the airlines main competitors, easyjet who allow parties or groups that are connected to the Galileo or Amadeus computer systems if approved by the airline.

Commenting on the action against Vtours Ryanair's Michael Cawley said;

"We welcome this decision by the Hamburg Regional Court in Germany. Screenscraping is an unlawful activity which is a breach of Ryanair's copyright and the terms of use of It is simply unacceptable that consumers are being misled by these screenscrapers into paying “handling charges” for Ryanair’s flights which they can purchase the same flights with no handling charge on www.ryanair.com. We remain deeply concerned at the failure of many of these screenscrapers to properly communicate Ryanair’s terms and conditions, our policies or up to date flight changes and flight information, to customers who mistakenly believe that they have made bookings directly with Ryanair."

Published by: Jon Vickery