Ryanair retorts to Antitrust: 'Online travel agencies are pirates'

"We have certainly made mistakes over the years but we have been fighting online booking 'pirates' like eDreams for at least a decade: the internet is a Wild West with little consumer protection," says the Irish manager. "At eDreams they claim that we try to block them from selling our tickets. This is not true. We just try to stop them from charging mark-ups on our tickets and ancillary services: then if the customer wants to pay a surcharge for eDreams' service, go ahead. But he must not think that he is giving money to Ryanair'. O'Leary recalls that in the travel sector "there are two business models: Ryanair is trying to avoid in the airline sector what Booking did in the hotel sector, imposing their service and charging 20% more. We originally had to deal with travel agencies charging 10%. But we succeeded in establishing the direct booking model by eliminating the costs of ticket distribution. I am convinced that we are right: more and more TAOs have entered into agreements with us'.

"Somewhere there must be a guiding hand" the attacks on Ryanair. "Maybe I'm too aggressive, I don't deal with bureaucrats as Enac president De Palma would like, but I have good relations with this government, never been better. I met Salvini, the president of Calabria Occhiuto recently came to Dublin after we opened the Reggio Calabria base. We met Urso. And then the Antitrust opens a silly proceeding like the one against us' for the risk of abuse of a dominant position when 'a ruling by the Court of Appeal of Milan in January 2024 explains that we have no dominant position. They should attack the pirate Ota, not us'.

"eDreams says that their business will collapse without access to Ryanair's tickets, but they have "premium services" with which in the end the consumer actually pays a higher price: there seems to be a small discount on our fares but by adding supposed "privileges" you pay more," notes the Irish manager. "The customer doesn't know that he is paying more for unnecessary services, he thinks they are Ryanair prices."

The 2023 traffic figures released by Enac show a strengthening of Ryanair's share of passenger traffic. The company carried 51.59 million passengers out of a total of 197.13 million recorded between arrivals and departures at Italian airports. Ryanair's share of total traffic is 26.2 per cent. Then there are the 5.05 million passengers of Malta Air, a joint venture between Ryanair and the Maltese government. If one does the sum, the passengers become 56.64 million, or 28.7 per cent of the total. To get an idea of the other companies, the Hungarian low-cost Wizz Air carried 17.66 million passengers, Ita Airways 15.17 million.

"The market that has grown the most since Covid is the Italian one, mainly thanks to Ryanair, while the one that has grown the least is the German one, because there is the monopoly of Lufthansa. The company is limiting the domestic market by inflating prices, they have convinced the German government to increase airport taxes everywhere and companies have cut flights'. O'Leary points out that 'average fares in Germany have doubled since 2019 while traffic is down 25 per cent'.

"In Italy Ryanair continues to have strong growth: in 2019, before the pandemic, we had 67 aircraft on 29 airports and were carrying 41 million passengers. In the meantime, we have opened new bases and new routes and in 2024 we have 103 aircraft on 19 bases, we serve 31 airports and expect to carry 60 million passengers, which is almost 50 per cent growth. We grow because we have the lowest prices. It is one of our fastest growing markets and, despite the antitrust proceedings, we want to continue to invest in Italy'.