Ryanair, Europe's largest low-cost carrier, highlighted its negative response to permit third parties to put up its flights for sale at a travel conference in London last week, reports Travelmole. There was a big demand for the airlines to start doing it but it has supported its decision which was in negative to such an idea.

The Irish-based budget carriers head of sales and marketing, Sinead Finn, told representatives that such a decision will have a negative impact on its passengers and fly in the face of its aim of driving ticket prices down, which are increasing almost every day.

Ms. Sinead Finn told representatives at the Eye for Travel Distribution Summit conference that the company felt permitting online travel agents and Global Distribution Systems to put up its flights for sale would net rates increase and bring about higher ticket prices for the customers..

"Our strategy is to keep costs down and pass that onto the consumer. That's why we will double growth by 2012 and carry 83m passengers", she said.

Ryanair's move is quite the opposite to it competitor easyJet, one of the Europe's largest low-cost carriers, which currently puts up its tickets for sale through the GDSs, though it charges €7.50 per segment for reservations and only sells through travel management firms, avoiding any arrangements with companies selling leisure flights.

Both of these low-cost carriers; Ryanair and easyJet, are aggressively trying to block screen-scraping from third parties.