Italy’s competition authority fines Ryanair €4.2m for “seriously unfair conduct”

Italy’s national competition authority has fined Ryanair – along with several other European airlines – several million euro for failing to refund customers for flights cancelled after June 2020.

The fines, which totaled €4.2 million, were handed down by the regulator for what they called “seriously unfair conduct”. criticising Ryanair’s decision to give passengers vouchers for their cancelled flights during the early days of the pandemic, and failing to pay them back the price of their tickets.

Additionally in recent days, the same Italian authority fined the British airline EasyJet €2.8 million, and Spanish airline Volotea €1.4 million for the same reason.

This is not the first run-in that Ryanair has had with Italian regulators: in April of 2020 Italy’s AGCM criticised Ryanair for having published on the internet prices for air services that did not initially indicate the amount of VAT on domestic flights, the online check-in fees, or the fees charged when paying by a credit card other than that approved by Ryanair.

The AGCM reportedly imposed fines on Ryanair for this, which they called an “unfair commercial practice.”