Well, here we go again. The next episode of wrangeling...
Up to 1,000 Ryanair passengers a day could find themselves stranded without flights as a result of an aggressive new policy at the airline to combat intermediary websites who offer flight bookings.
The low-cost airline is to start cancelling bookings which have been made on so called 'screen scrapers' from Monday.
Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said that about 1,000 bookings are made with Ryanair via these websites each day.
'We are free to cancel a booking,' he said a press conference in London at which he announced a massive seat sale. 'We want to cause as much chaos for the screen scrapers as possible.'
Screen scrapers are websites which compare costs from different airlines, and can also be used to book flights. Asked what will happen to people who have booked on these sites, Mr O'Leary said: 'They won't be flying.'
He said that passengers are 'getting stiffed' on these sites, which usually charge more than fares quoted on Ryanair.com.
Ryanair will refund the cost of the flight to the intermediary website. In such bookings, Mr O'Leary said, Ryanair does not deal directly with passengers, nor does it have e-mail addresses for them.
Passing the refund on - and refunding the cost which the intermediary site charged - will be left up to that site.
Thousands of passengers stranded again, because MOL detests all intermediaries. Anybody can explain that (Freud expert could help perhaps)?
The quotation source: RTÉ News