Despite his many publicity stunts, Ryanair’s boss Michael O’Leary has so far resisted brandishing a cutlass to repel OTA “pirates” in his battle against screen scrapers.
O’Leary’s hunt for pirate marauders instead came to a head in an obscure US courtroom in July, when he took on the might of Booking.com – accusing it of attempts to defraud by taking Ryanair’s flights and ancillaries and selling them at a mark-up without the airline’s authorisation.
Screen scrapers, in the airline’s words, use intermediate software providers to scrape Ryanair’s website, and then "overcharge" consumers for the air fares and/or ancillary services.
