Ryanair's legal action against online travel giant Booking.com is an argument two decades in the making, according to Eoghan Corry.
The airlines’ legal action got underway in the US state of Delaware yesterday.
Ryanair claims Booking.com's parent company and a group of subsidiaries have been selling its flights on their websites without its approval.
The case is based in the US because Booking.com's parent company, Booking Holdings Inc, is based there.
Travel Extra Editor Eoghan Corry told Breakfast Business the disagreement has been going on for almost two decades.
"Ryanair never made their inventory, their fares available to online travel agents," he said.
"Booking.com is by far the largest of them and quite dominant in the sector.
"They usually do a deal with airlines, airlines are very happy to get the business."
A Ryanair Boeing 737-8AS aircraft in Palma de Mallorca, Spain in August 2011. Image: Greg Bajor / AlamyMr Corry said Ryanair is less open to collaboration because the airline almost acts like its own version of Booking.com.
"Ryanair... built a website which gets as much traffic as most of the online travel agents and started behaving like an online travel agent themselves," he said.
"You're buying car hire, hotels, all of those sorts of things.
"There's two ways that people sell on travel: one is a net rate, where you get a little bit lower than the public fare and you keep the difference, or else you get commission and get 10% of what you sell.
"That's how the traditional online travel agent worked - Ryanair never did any of that".
Online travel agents
Mr Corry said Booking.com took Ryanair’s fares and started selling them independently of the airline.
"Ryanair said not just do we disapprove of this, they went a step further and they started blocking online travel agents and in some cases refusing boarding to people who had booked through a third party," he said.
Eoghan said the case could see Ryanair do another deal similar to previous ones.
"Ryanair have been fighting with every single online travel agent and since December, something really interesting happened," he said.
"The online travel agents all stopped stocking Ryanair.
"Ryanair always said not many of our seats were sold through this but their load factor fell down to 89%.
"Ryanair got hit in the pocket and then we saw Ryanair do deals - they've done seven deals with online travel agents including a subsidiary of Booking.com."
Eoghan added that the case is "a little bit unpredictable" as it is based in the US.
Ryanair claims consumers booking airline tickets are "often lured into websites of online travel agents" only to later pay "significantly higher fees" for baggage, seat reservation and other services.
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