Ryanair Holdings, is an Irish airline group headquartered in Swords (County Dublin), has been hit with a nearly €256 mn fine by Italy’s antitrust authority over what regulators describe as an abusive strategy aimed at customers booking flights through travel agencies.
The Rome-based watchdog said Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers deliberately erected obstacles for agency-linked customers.
Measures included extra facial recognition checks, disabling payment functions, deleting user accounts, and repeatedly disrupting ticket sales. According to the authority, these practices applied only to passengers who didn’t book directly with Ryanair.
Regulators also accuse the airline of strong-arming agencies into restrictive commercial agreements. The authority says Ryanair blocked agencies from bundling flights with other travel services and publicly targeted non-partner platforms.
The conduct allegedly ran from April 2023 through at least April 2025. Long enough to matter.
Ryanair says it will fight the ruling. The airline called the decision bizarre and unsound, adding that the regulator’s view that Ryanair holds a dominant position in flights to and from Italy won’t survive appeal.
The company insists its business model promotes competition, not the opposite.
Relations between Ryanair and Italian authorities have been tense for years. Friction intensified in summer 2023 when the government imposed caps on domestic airfares to island destinations.
Around the same time, the competition authority opened probes into Ryanair’s role in ancillary travel markets, including car rentals and hotel bookings.
Industry reaction split along predictable lines.
The online travel agency association EU travel tech welcomed the fine, arguing that Ryanair’s conduct had a single objective: making it harder for consumers to compare and combine travel options across online platforms.
According to Beinsure analysts, this theme is becoming common in disputes between airlines and intermediaries.
This isn’t new territory for Ryanair. In 2024, the airline reached a settlement with On the Beach Group Plc, ending litigation that began in 2021 over alleged anti-competitive practices tied to package holidays. Different market, same fault line.
Whether the Italian ruling sticks now moves to the courts. Appeals take time. Fines, meanwhile, get attention.
Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline conglomerate and the parent of Ryanair, Ryanair UK, Buzz, Lauda, and Malta Air. The group specializes in low-cost, short-haul air travel, connecting over 240 destinations across more than 40 countries with a fleet exceeding 640 aircraft.
