The bullying European budget airline Ryanair has hit out at online travel agents after getting dropped by a string of them in the run-up to Christmas. Multimillionaire boss Michael O'Leary called the online retailers 'Pirates' in a bitter attack on them after news broke that a growing number of online agencies had dropped sales of the airline.
The airline confirmed sales and load factor will be hit in the short term by being dropped by the online sales sites, by as much as 2% in January alone. However, the carrier thinks long-term profits or load factors will not be materially affected.
A Ryanair spokesperson said: "Ryanair will respond to this welcome removal of our flights from OTA [online travel agent] pirate websites, by lowering fares where necessary to encourage all passengers to book directly on Ryanair.com where they are guaranteed to always get the lowest air fares... In the meantime, Ryanair continues to make its fares available to honest/transparent OTA's such as Google Flights".
The aggressive way Ryanair is attacking those online retailers is nothing new, the company takes great pride in breaking the mould in decency when dealing with any company or person it doesn't like or criticise the airline, frequently taking to social media to bully, insult or otherwise denigrate.
The online travel agents that have dropped Ryanair have thus far remained silent on the issue.
