The Austrian Supreme Court has ruled that 14 out of 15 fee clauses in Ryanair’s standard terms and conditions are unlawful under Austrian consumer law, marking a victory for the country’s consumer watchdog.
The case was brought by the Verein für Konsumenteninformation (VKI), Austria’s consumer protection association, which challenged a range of fees buried in the airline’s General Conditions of Carriage, its Schedule of Fees, and supplementary contractual documents used in its dealings with Austrian passengers.
The Supreme Court upheld the decisions of two lower courts in full.
Ryanair’s appeal against the remaining 14 findings was rejected entirely, and the airline was ordered to pay VKI’s legal costs of €2,544.90.
The ruling covers a wide range of charges that the court found to be either intransparent, grossly unfair, or both.
Among the fees declared unlawful are a €50 call-centre booking fee, a €25 infant fee, a €55 airport check-in fee, a €15 boarding pass reissuance fee, and a €100 missed-flight rebooking fee. Name change fees of up to €160 and flight change fees of up to €60 were also found to violate Austrian consumer protection law, as were clauses governing checked baggage forfeiture, family seat reservation charges, and the conditions attached to tax refunds.
The court found that several clauses failed the transparency requirement under section 6(3) of the Consumer Protection Act, meaning consumers could not reliably understand their rights and obligations from reading them. Others were found to be grossly disadvantageous under section 879(3) of the Civil Code, for instance, the check-in fee, which the court noted could be triggered even by a server outage on Ryanair’s own systems, effectively shifting the airline’s business risk onto passengers.
Ryanair has three months to stop using the offending clauses in its dealings with consumers in Austria.
The ruling does not, in itself, order Ryanair to reimburse past customers, the VKI’s action was a collective injunction proceeding, not a claim for damages.
Individual passengers who believe they paid fees now found to be unlawful would need to pursue separate claims.
Contacted by Brussels Signal, Ryanair disputed the characterisation of the ruling.
“Your reading of the ruling is incorrect,” a spokesperson said.
“The Austrian Supreme Court did not declare our pricing ‘unlawful’, nor do they require us to ‘reimburse customers retroactively’.” The airline did not address which specific findings it considers to have been mischaracterised.
The VKI is now urging Austrian consumer to files separate claims. They provide on their website a sample for a refund-letter addressed to Rynair.
Last week, Ryanair said it would scrap a fee levied on parents wanting to sit next to their children after UK regulators opened an investigation into the added cost.
