Court rules that Ryanair must not refer to websites as "bastards"
10 September 2010
Ryanair has successfully sued a Spanish website - and won the right to describe it as a "parasite". But not as a "bastard".

The Atrapalo website is known as a "screenscraper" - a website which grabs information from other websites. In this case, it's details of flights from airline websites, which it then sells itself, charging an additional booking fee. Ryanair doesn't like this sort of thing - and has already had successful days in court against similar sites in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. This week it emerged victorious from Barcelona's Constitutional Court with exclusive right to sell its own flights.

However, the victory was somewhat tarnished by the judgement which took offence at Ryanair's robust tone. The court held that the budget carrier (which to the dismay of BA styles itself "the world's favourite airline") will be allowed to describe the likes of Atrapalo as "parasites of the sector", "dead wood" and "illegal sellers" - but referring to them as "bastards" is just not on.

Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary celebrates victory, the bastard

Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said that Atrapalo had been getting away with this "unauthorised reselling" for too long, and expressed indignation at the "addition of charges which consumers don't pay when they book directly with Ryanair".

Obviously Ryanair would never stoop to additional charges like that - such as £20 to put a suitcase in the hold, £5 to check in online or a £5 "administration fee" just to actually get a flight. No no no.