According to the organisation, Ryanair has been removed from many major websites, including Booking.com, Kiwi, and Kayak, since the beginning of December.

It stated that the abrupt withdrawal from what it called online travel agency “pirates” was “welcome,” but it also stated that it would have an adverse effect of 1% or 2% on its so-called load factor, which is a crucial indicator of how successfully airlines fill their flights, in December and January.

Short-term ticket sales will also be impacted, as Ryanair said that airline will decrease prices for customers who book straight on its website in response.

That being said, it does not anticipate that the change would “materially affect” its full-year passenger or profit projections.

In December, it carried 12.5 million passengers, 9% higher than a year earlier, according to its most recent statement. However, its load factor decreased to 91% from 92%.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas, together with the continuous cancellation of flights to Tel Aviv and nearby Jordan, resulted in the cancellation of almost 900 more Ryanair flights last month.

Its passenger count increased by 13% to 181.8 million for the entire year 2023 from 160.4 million in 2022, even after over 2,700 flights were cancelled as a result of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

It also stated that its load factor increased from 92% to 94% throughout the course of the year.

The announcement coincides with a protracted legal battle that Ryanair has been having with online booking companies. The airline has filed a lawsuit in the US against Booking Holdings, the company that owns Booking.com, and its subsidiaries, which include Kayak, Agoda, and Priceline.

Although the cause of its removal from the websites was not immediately apparent, Ryanair speculated that it might have been due to a recent Irish High Court decision that barred screenscraper Flightbox from “unlawfully scraping Ryanair.com content” for online travel agencies.

When someone accesses an airline's website through screen-scraping, they frequently sell the carrier's fares to their own clients via their own website.

“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 without OTA Pirate overcharges, fake contact info, or other pricing/refund scams,” the airline stated today.

“In the meantime, Ryanair continues to make its fares available to honest/transparent OTA's such as Google Flights, who do not add hidden mark ups to Ryanair prices and who direct passengers to make their bookings directly on the Ryanair.com website,” it stated.