Ryanair investigated for alleged abuse of dominant position in Italy

Over the last decade, Ryanair has built up a strong presence in the Italian market, becoming the dominant air carrier in Italy offering scheduled air transport services to passengers on national flights and flights to and from Italy (with the share of passengers carried on domestic flights amounting to 44%).

However, according to the ICA, over the years Ryanair abused its dominant position by allegedly implementing a commercial policy aimed at discriminating between passengers who purchased air tickets directly on the Ryanair official website and/or app and those who chose to use travel agencies and online travel agents (“OTAs”). The described policy was allegedly implemented by Ryanair as follows:

• By prohibiting the use of the Ryanair website for commercial purposes (with the inclusion of specific clauses in the website Terms and Conditions);
• By using access monitoring systems and technical blocks on the Ryanair website. Such blocks were effectively applied downstream when a flight ticket purchase was made through a travel agency. Such blocking mechanisms ultimately prevented post-sale operations by the travel agency - including the online check-in operation (which consumers buying flight tickets through intermediaries were often forced to do at the airport at a significant extra cost); and
• By spreading potentially disparaging statements against travel agencies both in the general information section on the Ryanair website and in the communications sent by Ryanair to travellers via e-mail. In such statements, travel agencies were usually referred to as “entities that would operate in an allegedly illegitimate, unreliable and more expensive way.”

In the ICA’s opinion, the described policy had the aim of centralising sales of airline tickets and other services exclusively to the Ryanair official channels.

In other words, the ICA believes that by directly selling to consumers Ryanair would be easily enabled - after hooking clients through the promotion of "low" fares for the transport service alone - to "push" the sale of additional services (e.g., priority tickets, checked luggage, choice of seat) through targeted marketing policies during and after the booking procedure, as well as acquiring passengers’ data for profiling purposes.

According to the ICA allegations, Ryanair is thus leveraging its dominant position in the air transport market, with the aim to exclude travel agencies from the market for the booking and sale of tourist services.

The described conduct may have not only had exclusionary effects against travel agencies and OTAs, but ultimately may also have had detrimental effects on consumers, as travellers would decide to purchase the flight separately and independently on the Ryanair website in order to obtain lower fares, meaning the other tourist services purchased via agencies (e.g., accommodation, car rental) would not enjoy the maximum protection granted under the Italian Tourism Code to travel packages purchased in bundles.

The proceeding is due to be closed by 31 December 2024.

The ICA decision (in Italian only) is available at the following link.

For more information, please contact Federico Marini Balestra, Lucia Antonazzi and Chiara Horgan.

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