Had a call yesterday from a friend who owns and runs a large and very prosperous independent travel agency with a large and very prosperous client base...they ring him when they want to travel, because they haven't the time or inclination to wade through the airlines' laborious websites, with their repetitions, unnecessary "registration" routines, and constant attempts to trick one into buying something you neither want nor need.
He charges them £15, which they are happy to pay, for making bookings on low-cost airlines, and sorting out the optimum itinerary/cost for them, using whichever airline it takes to do that. He pays for the travel, and politely invoices his clients who pay withn 30 days. He also sorts out hotels, car hire etc, often using the airline's suggested supplier, but not always.
Ryanair has now contacted his clients directly, cancelling the bookings he has made for them on Ryanair. All they have done is ring him, sympathise, use some very choice kanguage about Ryanair, send him the money refunded by Ryanair, and ask him to rebook them on another airline, hotel, car hire firm or whatever was cancelled by Ryanair.
Which he has done. Not one of them has indicated that they will succumb to Ryanair's tactics; they just won't use Ryanair again, because they will continue to use my friend to arrange their travel, and he is not allowed to book and pay for their seats on Ryanair.
There is only one loser and that's Ryanair. Who cares?
BTW 1 We buy travel for our staff using a company card. I guess this means that we will have to stop using Ryanair, too. Oh what a shame. There's plenty of others.
BTW 2 One or two of my friend's clients said they are thinking of legal action for brach of contract against Ryanair, just for the fun of it, but that they probably can't be bothered. As most of them said, you don't sue crooks, you just give them a wide berth.