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Comment by doix | Hacker News Reader

Pretty light article, does anyone have any more context? Does this set a strong precedent for all these types of sites? Booking.com wouldn't be the only site reselling airline tickets, in fact I wasn't even aware they did flights.

Does Booking.com do something particularly bad compared to something like SkyScanner or Google flights?

> "We expect that this ruling will end the internet piracy and overcharging perpetrated on both airlines and other travel companies and consumers by the unlawful activity of OTA (online travel agent) Pirates," Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said.

Why is it almost always cheaper to buy through some weird 3rd party than with the airline directly? Sometimes it's a few bucks and I book with the airline directly, but sometimes it's over $50 cheaper to book through some 3rd party I've never heard of.

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I could be mistaken, but from what I'm understanding is that Booking.com books the flights for you, by automating the booking process on Ryanair (and subsequently add their own fees), whereas the likes of SkyScanner show you the information, then direct you to the Ryanair website to book through the airline.

You're right, I was mixing concepts. SkyScanner and Google flights both do what you say. The companies that SkyScanner and co find are what Ryanair are complaining about. So the likes of; Trip, MyTrip, Kiwi, Expedia, GoToGate etc. I wonder if this will affect all of them.

GoToGate is what booking.com flights actually are (at least last time I booked). So probably.

Wikipedia says they did it at some point, but stopped.

>GoToGate was used for a time as the flight provider for Booking.com for various European countries.[7]

Yup, and having needed customer service the one time I booked a flight through booking.com, I can confirm that they absolutely get in the way - a name change on a ticket turned into an almighty rigamarole with charges left right and centre - even though it was booking who had truncated the name - and the airline wouldn’t talk to me directly as I wasn’t the booking party, booking.com was. The airline said the change would have been free if they could do it themselves, but the request had to originate from booking.com, who not only charged nearly €200 but also took so long about it (a week) they were almost too late.

I never thought I’d find myself arguing Ryanair’s corner, but adding booking.com to the mix likely just makes an already poor experience with Ryanair truly dire.

Which is why I always try to cut out as many middlemen as possible, especially when traveling. Except Costco, because it’s Costco.

Which is actually convenient for booking users. The Ryanair website is a big mess.

I recently ordered ticket from Ryanair, if you simply look for the "next" button nothing is a mess. The only somewhat messy thing is the content of what you buy, for example a family package has only one large suitcase which is unusual, and that Ryanair are super strict at the airport- I saw someone taking out socks to remove extra 300 grams from their suitcase.

Is it? it’s certainly no worse than EasyJet, and unlike the larger transatlantic carriers (ba/united/delta are the ones I’m most experienced with) the websites are navigable, performant, and actually functional.

Meanwhile booking.com has a recurring pattern of diverting you via search results to show you extra sponsored results. My experience is that Ryanair is far easier to navigate and book than Booking.com

I wonder how does booking.com pay for the tickets? Do they use a new card for every transaction or do they buy thousands of tickets with the same card? Do they use a corporate card or personal card (which might be against ToS)? If they use a corporate card, isn't it easy for Ryanair to see it and block the transaction?

Also, cannot airline see that requests come from datacenter IPs and not from residential?

It looks like it is super easy to block this on airline side.

Virtual credit cards are an established financial technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_payment_number

IP addresses are a tradeable commodity.

To issue virtual card numbers you must be a bank, right?

To be issued a virtual card number, you need only be a bank customer

No, eligible businesses can do this through Stripe for example.

>Also, cannot airline see that requests come from datacenter IPs and not from residential?

Easily solveable by getting a data SIM, plugging it into a LTE/5G USB stick, and routing your traffic through that.

It is not very reliable link though, there will be errors, timeouts.

> Does this set a strong precedent for all these types of sites?

Ryanair has successfully sued other companies doing the same for a while now. But I mostly know about their cases in the EU. This case is from USA.

> Why is it almost always cheaper to buy through some weird 3rd party than with the airline directly?

It's not necessarily cheaper, the flight-search is usually just better in filtering, and has a cache of previous results. So humans might get the same cheap result if they just search long enough and know how to use the airline-site efficiently.

> Why is it almost always cheaper to buy through some weird 3rd party than with the airline directly?

> sometimes it's over $50 cheaper

$ tells me you are in the US where these kind of legacy shenanigans happen. Never with Ryanair.

I'm actually from the UK, just wrote it in dollars since it's a currency I assume everyone knows the value of. I just check SkyScanner and buy from the cheapest reseller. Very recently I had to buy a ticket from Edinburgh to Oslo, it was £45 cheaper to buy it from Trip.com than directly from Norwegian Airlines.

Out of curiosity, I did go and check a bunch of routes that I know Ryanair flies on SkyScanner, and it was cheaper to buy directly from Ryanair. So fair play to them, I'm surprised anyone would buy from a 3rd party when buying direct is cheaper.

> Does Booking.com do something particularly bad compared to something like SkyScanner or Google flights?

Presumably, given they're fine with Google Flights:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67873695

"In a statement, Ryanair described the online agents as "pirates". It said it would "continue to make its fares available to honest/transparent online travel agents such as Google Flights," which it said "do not add hidden mark ups to Ryanair prices and who direct passengers to make their bookings directly on the Ryanair.com website"."

> honest/transparent online travel agents such as Google Flights

Disingenuous at best. Google Flights is not a Ryanair agent.

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