Czech ticket platform Kiwi announces new partnership with Ryanair

Low-cost airline Ryanair has announced a new partnership with Czech online travel agency Kiwi.com, allowing the latter to sell the budget air carrier’s flight tickets at no mark-ups via the Kiwi website. This is especially significant given a serious legal dispute between the companies in 2021.

The partnership guarantees Kiwi direct access to the Ryanair website without the need for “screen scraping” (automatically extracting data from Ryanair). Thanks to this, consumers will see all Ryanair-flight prices on the Kiwi site in real life and will be subject to no elevated prices or extra charges.

Ryanair marketing director Dara Brady said: “This is great news for Kiwi customers…this new partnership represents a significant step in achieving [heightened] protection for all Kiwi customers.” The partnership between Ryanair and Kiwi takes effect immediately.

Under this new agreement, Kiwi customers will also have access to their myRyanair account via Kiwi. This will give passengers full information about flights, seats, bags, and potential changes. Customers will also receive all Ryanair flight information directly to their email if buying via Kiwi.

Kiwi customers will also no longer need to complete Ryanair’s customer-verification process, which customers of other unauthorized online travel agencies must do.

According to Ryanair, the Irish aviation company has long been a vocal advocate for consumer protection and has actively campaigned against overcharging by unauthorized online travel agencies. 

Kiwi and Ryanair’s relationship has not always been rosy. In 2021, both locked horns in a legal dispute over Kiwi's practices for allegedly mishandling passenger data. Ryanair claimed that Kiwi’s personal data usage prevented the Irish airline from fulfilling its financial obligations. 

However, the Czech Constitutional Court ruled in favor of Kiwi. Despite Ryanair threatening to reject boarding passes sold through Kiwi, no such instances occurred. The relationship between the two companies had been strained for years, with Ryanair first filing a lawsuit in 2019.

“The announcement today of the cooperation with Ryanair is a positive one, ending a period of friction that has impacted our customers,” said Kiwi chief commercial officer Golan Shaked.

Last summer, American Airlines (AA) took Kiwi to court, accusing the Brno-based company of reselling AA’s tickets without authorization. Two years before this, U.S. air carrier Southwest Airlines sued the company for trademark infringement.