Ryanair booking in for a website upgrade
CALCULATING the cost of a Ryanair flight is to get easier when the airline revamps its website later this month.
After coming under fire from consumer groups for misleading pricing, the budget carrier headed by chief executive Michael O'Leary will close its website for three days to instal upgraded software.
The new system will ensure that at all stages of the booking process prices include all taxes and non-optional charges.
Passengers will be unable to book a flight, change their flight details or book-in online when the website is shut from 10pm on February 22 until 11pm on February 25. The Ryanair call centre will also be closed, although all flights will operate as normal.
Dismissed
While some analysts predict the airline could lose out on as much as €30m in revenue, the airline has dismissed this saying it has already taken extra advance bookings and will continue to do so until the shutdown.
Ryanair is heavily reliant on its website, with 99pc of bookings made online. The temporary closure will allow Ryanair to meet an order set by the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) that all prices must be inclusive of taxes and charges. A January 31 deadline had been set for compliance but the airline failed to meet this citing technical difficulties.
A Ryanair spokeswoman said: "The OFT has already accepted that our homepage only displays all-inclusive prices, and that no passenger can make a Ryanair booking without first being aware of, accepting and confirming the total fully inclusive amount to be paid on their credit/debit card.
"We expect that the middle pages of the booking process will be fully tax inclusive once we replace the existing 'Openskies' booking engine with the 'Newskies' upgraded software, which is scheduled for later this month," she added.
- Breda Heffernan
