Friday, July 19, 2024
reading time: 2 minutes
Ryanair has won a landmark case against Booking.com, with a Delaware court ruling in favour of Ryanair’s claims of fraud and illegal screen-scraping, causing economic damage.
Ryanair Holdings announced today, Friday, July 19, that it Delaware County Court The jury returned unanimous verdicts in their favor. The jury ruled that Booking.com It violated the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, intentionally defrauded Ryanair and caused economic harm through illegal data extraction activities. The court also dismissed all of Booking.com’s counterclaims, including allegations of defamation, unfair competition and deceptive trade practices.
These rulings confirm that Booking.com engaged in illegal data extraction from Ryanair’s website with fraudulent intent. Ryanair has consistently criticised the deceptive tactics of OTA Hackers Such as Booking.com, which uses intermediary software to collect information from Ryanair’s website. This data is then used to overcharge consumers for Ryanair’s prices and services while masking these anti-consumer actions by making bookings using fake customer emails and payment cards.
Michael O’Reilly, Ryanair’s CEO, said:
“Ryanair and our customers warmly welcome yesterday’s unanimous jury verdict in Delaware, which found in Ryanair’s favour, finding that travel giant Booking.com illegally ‘hijacked’ Ryanair’s website, and did so with the intent to defraud both Ryanair and ordinary consumers, in violation of the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. We expect this verdict to put an end to the online piracy and overcharging of airlines, other travel companies and consumers through the illegal activity of online travel agency hackers such as Booking.com.
It is unacceptable that global giants such as Booking.com (market cap $133 billion) have engaged in these illegal and deceptive practices for many years with the intent to defraud both Ryanair and consumers. Ryanair has fought to protect consumers and ensure they have direct access to Ryanair’s low fares and our low-priced ancillary services without the intervention of online travel agencies (OTAs), such as Booking.com and others, who overcharge uninformed consumers who believe they are booking directly with Ryanair, but are in fact being tricked into booking (at inflated prices) via OTA hackers such as Booking.com.
We also welcome the Delaware court’s dismissal of Booking.com’s counterclaims that Ryanair defamed it by describing it as an OTA pirate. We hope that these Delaware court rulings will now put an end to the illegal scams being carried out by OTAs like Ryanair.com, and force consumer protection agencies across the UK and Europe to finally take action to stop these illegal scams and the overcharging of consumers for flights and ancillary services.
“This ruling is a major victory for low-cost air travel, and it is also a major victory for travelers. We sincerely thank the Delaware District Court and the jury for their verdict, which fully vindicates Ryanair’s case against Booking.com on behalf of our customers. We now demand that Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogle (remuneration of $46 million in 2023) and his company stop scanning Ryanair.com and stop overcharging consumers for inflated airfares and additional services, now that Booking.com has been found to have violated the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.”
