Ryanair wins ‘screenscraping’ case against Lastminute in France

The French unit of online travel agent Lastminute has been ordered by a court in Paris to stop reselling Ryanair flights or face fines of up to €1,000 per day.

The Paris Court of Appeal has also confirmed that the travel site must pay Ryanair €50,000 for reselling its tickets without the airline’s consent, as well as making a contribution towards its legal costs. Ryanair has welcomed the judgment in the case, which is part of a wider battle that the Irish airline is fighting against “screenscrapers” – websites that take fares from Ryanair’s site and sell them on to their own customers, often with a mark-up.

The French court’s decision kicks in next month. Dara Brady, Ryanair’s director of marketing and digital, said the airline’s right to determine the channels through which its products are sold is constitutionally guaranteed in France.

“Ryanair’s direct-to-customers distribution model provides our customers with the best choice, care and lowest fares,” he said. “We again urge consumers to avoid screenscrapers such as Lastminute and book directly on the Ryanair website.”

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Ryanair has launched a flurry of legal actions against screenscrapers in Ireland, Britain, Europe and the US, where it is suing the parent company of Booking.com, one of the biggest travel sites on the web. The Irish airline says the websites that resell its fares operate outside the terms and conditions of its website, selling higher fares to passengers and making it difficult to enforce operational protocols, such as changes to Covid flying restrictions.

Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, has previously derided screenscrapers as a “pain in the ass” and has called on the European Commission to take action against them.