Rome, December 23, 2025 — The Italian Competition Authority has fined Ryanair DAC and its parent company Ryanair Holdings €255,761,692 (approximately $301 million) for abusing a dominant position by obstructing travel agencies’ ability to sell Ryanair flights as part of broader travel packages.
The authority found that Ryanair, which holds a dominant position in passenger air transport services on routes to and from Italy, implemented a multi-stage strategy between April 2023 and at least April 2025 aimed at limiting the ability of online and brick-and-mortar travel agencies to purchase Ryanair flights as an input for tourism services.
According to the authority, Ryanair’s dominance stems not only from its large and growing market share — accounting for around 38–40% of passengers on routes to and from Italy — but also from a range of additional indicators demonstrating significant market power and the ability to act independently of competitors and consumers.
Abusive Strategy Against Agencies
The investigation concluded that Ryanair deliberately made it more difficult, costly, or technically burdensome for agencies to buy Ryanair tickets through its website and combine them with flights from other carriers or with ancillary tourism and insurance services.
The conduct unfolded in several phases. From mid-April 2023, Ryanair introduced facial recognition procedures for passengers whose tickets were purchased via travel agencies. Later in 2023, after the investigation had begun, the airline intermittently or fully blocked agency bookings on its website, including by disabling payment methods and cancelling large numbers of user accounts linked to online travel agencies.
In early 2024, Ryanair imposed partnership agreements on online travel agencies and introduced “Travel Agent Direct” arrangements for physical agencies. These agreements limited agencies’ ability to bundle Ryanair flights with other services. The authority found that Ryanair reinforced these restrictions by intermittently blocking bookings and by launching aggressive public communications against agencies that refused to sign the agreements, which the airline labelled “pirate OTAs.”
Impact on Downstream Markets
The authority concluded that these practices significantly restricted agencies’ ability to compete in downstream tourism markets, reducing both direct and indirect competitive pressure. The conduct also harmed agencies’ ability to attract online traffic and diminished the quality and variety of travel services available to consumers.
Ryanair began restoring more neutral market conditions only in April 2025, when it made available a full white-label iFrame solution and application programming interface (API) integration for online travel agencies. The authority found that, until the effective integration of these tools, Ryanair’s conduct was capable of — and did — restrict competition.
Source: https://www.agcm.it/media/comunicati-stampa/2025/12/A568-
