Air tickets could not be refunded through passengers’ travel agent

Case no. BS-48424/2023
Judgment delivered on 26 March 2024

Ryanair Limited, Ryanair Corporate Head Office, Dublin Airport, Dublin, Ireland
vs.
A and B

A and B had bought air tickets from a travel agent (an online ticket broker), who then bought the tickets from the airline Ryanair. When the flight was cancelled, the airline wrote an email to B containing a link where he could enter information about the booking to obtain a refund. The refund would then be made via the payment method used for the original booking.

B used the refund link, and immediately afterwards received an auto-generated response from the airline stating, among other things, that the refund had been made via the payment method used for the original booking. If the customer had used a travel agent, the customer had to request to receive the refund from the travel agent if the payment card used was not the customer’s own. B then asked the travel agent to transfer the refund amount. The travel agent replied that the amount had not been received from the airline. The passengers then filed a lawsuit against the airline.

It was undisputed that A and B had not received the refund from either the airline or the travel agent. The District Court and the High Court were satisfied that the airline had transferred the refund amount to the travel agent, and the Supreme Court did not find sufficient grounds to set aside this assessment of the evidence.

The question was then whether the airline had been entitled to pay the refund via the travel agent. Based on an assessment of the case, the Supreme Court found that B had accepted that the refund amount would be paid to the travel agent. The airline was therefore entitled to make the refund to the travel agent with discharging effect.

The Supreme Court thus upheld the District Court’s judgment and acquitted the airline.