Ryanair shuts down online bookings for three days

Irish budget airline Ryanair has revealed that it will not be taking internet or telephone bookings between 22nd and 25th February. The reason for the shutdown is a changeover to a new booking system, which is expected to take three days. The root cause of the change, which the airline is portraying as a system update, is likely to be an ultimatum from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). The OFT has demanded that Ryanair provide more consumer-friendly fare information. Hanging over the airline should it continue to fail to meet OFT requirements is the threat of having its website shut down.

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The OFT, one of two British competition authorities, warned a total of thirteen budget airlines that they would be required to give transparent fare information on their websites back in February 2007. They stated that consumers were being misled by the fare prices shown. The actual cost, including taxes and other fees, was not clear until the final stage of booking. The process follows from an EU Commission initiative which took aim at European airlines for providing misleading pricing information.

Eleven of the airlines required to make changes to their websites had already met the OFT's conditions by July of last year. Ryanair and Aer Lingus initially failed to conform to the requirements because of supposed technical difficulties in implementing them and were granted an extension of the deadline until 31st January. Whilst Aer Lingus met this deadline, Ryanair obtained a further extension to the end of February and, according to the OFT, is the last remaining company not to have fulfilled its requirements.

In an interview in the Irish Independent, a Ryanair spokeswoman played down the fact that the requirement for transparent fare information had not been met, stating that the OFT had already accepted that the Ryanair homepage only displayed all-inclusive prices, and that no passenger could book a flight without viewing the full price. She added that the middle pages of the booking process would only be able to display the full price once the existing 'Openskies' booking engine was replaced with the 'Newskies' system from booking systems specialist Navitaire, scheduled for later this month. According to Ryanair, almost all their bookings are made via the website.

A number of media outlets have speculated on the level of sales the company is likely to lose, with £20m a widely quoted figure. This would represent a significant setback for the company which is already facing falling profits. Ryanair stated, however, that advance bookings had been strong and that all flights during this period would take place as normal.

(jbe)