Antitrust fine Ryanair: 256 million for abuse of dominant position

The Competition and Market Authority has imposed a Ryanair Dac, jointly with the parent company Ryanair Holdings, one fine of 255,761,692 euros for abuse of a dominant position, from April 2023 to at least April 2025. This is what we read in an Antitrust press release.

Dominant position

Ryanair, the Authority underlines, “holds one dominant position in the upstream market of national and European scheduled passenger air transport services to/from Italy, as an input for online and physical travel agencies.

The dominant position derives not only from market shares significant (38-40% of passengers transported on all routes to/from Italy) and continuously growing, also from numerous other indicators.

All these indicators contribute to giving Ryanair a significant market power and the ability to act independently from competitors and consumers, also considering the significant distance compared to the performance of the main competing carriers”.

Market strategy

At the end of a detailed investigation, explains the note, the Authority ascertained that Ryanair “has implemented a complex strategy to block, hinder it makes feath’ differed and/the economically the technically angry thepurchase of flights of Ryanair on the ryanair.com website by travel agencies, OTAs and physical ones, in combination with flights of other carriers and/or with other tourist and insurance services”.

Ryanair’s conduct

In particular, it emerged that “Ryanair began, at the end of 2022, to examine a series of hypothesis of obstacle to travel agencieswhich then materialized, starting from mid-April 2023, in interventions of gradually increasing intensity.

• In a first phase, Ryanair introduced procedures facial recognition intended for users of tickets purchased through an agency on its website.
• In a second phase – at the end of 2023, once the investigation has started – Ryanair has blocked completely or intermittently the attempts to booking by agencies of travel on its site (for example, through the blocking of payment methods and the mass cancellation of accounts linked to bookings made by OTAs).
• In a third phase, at the beginning of 2024, Ryanair has imposed partnership agreements to the OTAs and, subsequently, of Travel Agent Direct to the physical agencies, with conditions limiting the possibility of the agencies to offer the Ryanair flight combined with other services, using the intermittent blocking of reservations and an aggressive communication campaign against OTAs that did not sign these agreements (pirate OTAs).
• In April 2025, Ryanair – making the complete iFrame whitelabel solution available to Otala – provided the integration of IT applications (so-called APIs) which, if well implemented, allow correct conditions of competition to be restored in the downstream market of tourism services”.

Therefore the Authority concluded that the conduct described, at least until the integration of the Ryanair APIs, “are suitable and have actually been able to hinder the sales of the agencies, also affecting the acquisition of Internet traffic by the Ota“.

The ascertained conduct, ultimately, concludes the Antitrust, “has jeopardized the agencies’ ability to purchase Ryanair flights to combine them with the flights of other carriers and/or additional tourist services, reducing direct and indirect competition exercised by the agencies themselves and, consequently, the quality and quantity of tourist services offered to consumers”.

Ryanair announces immediate appeal

Ryanair will immediately appeal against the Italian Antitrust decision and the fine, calling the measure “bizarre and unfounded”. The company announced this in a note underlining that the provision is in contrast with the ruling of the Court of Milan of January 2024, which established that the company’s direct distribution model “undoubtedly” offers benefits to consumers” and leads to “competitive rates”.

“If today’s decision and sanction of the AGCM, legally unfounded, are not challenged, then the AGCM claims to place itself above the courts of Milan in competition decisions. Ryanair has fought for transparent pricing for many years, and our approved OTA agreements are demonstrably and clearly pro-consumer,” said Ryanair’s CEO, O’Leary, in a statement.

“When Ryanair started in 198520% of ticket revenue was wasted paying 10% commissions to travel agencies and 10% to GDS systems, in an industry with high tariffs but profit margins of less than 1%. The Internet and the ryanair.com website have allowed Ryanair to distribute directly to consumers, and Ryanair passed on these 20% savings in the form of lowest airfares in Italy and Europe. Today’s AGCM decision is legally unfounded and contradicts the previous ruling of the Court of Milan in January 2024, which declared that Ryanair’s direct distribution model “undoubtedly benefits consumers”.

“Both we and our lawyers are confident that all this is flawed and manipulated. The AGCM ruling and its absurd fine of 256 million euros will be annulled on appeal”, concludes the CEO.

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