Today there was yet a further sign that airlines feel they have a stronger hand in haggling with online travel agencies than they used to.
Ryanair, the Irish airline, issued a statement echoing complaints made on Friday by British Airways and Iberia that some brand websites owned by European online travel agency powerhouse eDreams Odigeo present airfares in a "non-transparent" way.
The low-cost carrier won a court injunction this past summer to prevent eDreams Odigeo from marketing its flights.
In today's complaint, Ryanair claims that eDreams continues scanning and providing Ryanair flight information by "screenscraping" and then shows "misleadingly" low prices as teasers.
The airline says that eDreams waits until the last moment when payment is due until it makes clear how various expenses are handled.
The airline also claims the site adds a handling charge that pushes up the actual ticket cost to fares higher than would be available by booking directly with Ryanair.
eDreams Odigeo responds
In response to the statement from Ryanair, eDreams issued this statement:
"This is not the first time that Ryanair has tried to damage the image and/or hinder the activity of online travel agencies, which provide users with a clear and transparent way to find the flight offers which best suit their needs, regardless which airline that may be.
...
It should be noted that Ryanair has also been condemned in writing on various occasions by the Supreme Courts of France and Spain for unfair competition against eDreams and other online travel agencies. ...
As a result Ryanair was forced to publish this ruling in five Spanish financial newspapers, stating that it would cease its previous unfair competition and not repeat it.
On the 30 October 2012 the Spanish Supreme Court rejected Ryanair’s right to appeal against the sentences that upheld eDreams right to offer Ryanair flights online. This blocked Ryanair’s last route to appeal eDreams’ ability to access flights on its website and its claim that this was unfair competition that infringed the airline’s intellectual property rights.
This was in complete support of rulings by Barcelona’s Second Commercial Court on the 11 February 2009, and Barcelona’s Provincial Court on the 17 December 2009 in favour of eDreams, forcing Ryanair to pay its legal costs.
In respect to Ryanair’s claims of transparency it should be noted that according to the important website for customer satisfaction, TrustPilot, (https://es.trustpilot.com/), eDreams has a score of 8.8 in comparison to the 3.7 that its users gave Ryanair."
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And on it goes...