In August 2008, the famous Irish discount airline Ryanair canceled a bunch of tickets passengers had purchased through outside websites, and they sent cease and desist letters to over 300 travel sites who have been “screen scraping” the Ryanair site. This has caused a lot of controversy in the online travel world, and many are crying foul and complaining Ryanair is being both unfair and stupid by banning other sites from using their prices for people researching flights on the internet. But if you look closely at the situation, Ryanair has good reasons for their actions, and they are also acting in the best interest of the traveling public as well. Here’s why:

Some screen scrapers are crooks

“Screen scraping” in case you haven’t heard of it, is a process whereby a system gets data from a website without properly visiting the site. When a traveler is looking for the cheapest fare between, say, London and Berlin, these sites call up the best prices from many different airline site databases, and then present the results so the consumer can compare and find the best deals. This is great for travelers, and this part isn’t what Ryanair is out to shut down, although it might actually have the affect of taking them out of these systems in the process. Most of these “meta-search” sites then send the customer to the website that offered the cheapest ticket, usually the Ryanair site itself, but some were doing something very deceptive instead.

What was happening, as Ryanair compellingly points out (<–link to a 5mb PDF document), is that some unscrupulous travel-booking sites were using this same technique to “scalp” tickets at much higher prices, just like at a concert or sporting event. The difference is that when you buy an expensive event ticket in the aftermarket, it’s understood that you are paying over face value. In the cases Ryanair documents, several sites were basically selling really cheap tickets on Ryanair at super inflated prices, and never revealing that the consumer was paying anything more than face value. In one example a site charged a traveler €37 for a ticket they paid Ryanair only €10 for.

Canceling those tickets was well within their rights, and it will help the consumer in the long run

Sure, it’s a shame if a traveler buys a ticket from someone they thought was an authorized ticket seller, and it turns out they weren’t really authorized. If a site commits obvious fraud when selling something they have no right to, it’s terrible that the buyer doesn’t get what they expected, but in these cases the former ticket holders might actually end up on top. All of them paid hyper-inflated prices for their tickets anyway, so as long as the middleman agency refunds their money (and Ryanair is definitely refunding the money to the agency), then the consumer might have a chance to get a cheaper ticket anyway. If Ryanair just honored all these inflated tickets then it’s likely we would never have heard of this situation, and these sites would likely carry on with this devious practice.

Besides, Ryanair specifically says in their purchase agreement that their tickets are only sold directly to consumers through their website and call centers. They also clearly prohibit commercial reselling of their tickets, so this isn’t even close to being a gray area, legally speaking.

Perfect price competition helps consumers

We hope this controversy doesn’t keep Ryanair from being listed on these meta-search sites for long, because this “perfect competition” as it’s called, is the best weapon consumers have in finding the cheapest ticket, and in keeping airlines from charging crazy prices to unsuspecting travelers. The airlines around the world are already struggling enough with competition and fuel prices without having to deal with websites illegally selling their tickets at much higher prices. The Ryanair ticket pricing system, and the system of sites like Kayak and SideStep, helps consumers save money. Allowing middleman sites to add their own huge fee to customers who think they are buying the cheapest ticket they can is a form of dishonesty and corruption that hurts travelers if it’s left unchecked.