Ryanair has attacked Thomas Cook, wanting the tour operator to justify its customers being overcharged. Thomas Cook has overcharged 2 Ryanair customers by £82, being billed £457.82 instead of £376 for a return fare. The customers were also charged an additional £160 fee for fuel surcharges, even though Ryanair doesn’t impose surcharges on any of their flights. The airline wishes to know how many other customers have been overcharged for their tickets or have suffered from the incurred surcharges.

Ryanair has contacted the AUC, European Commission, OFT, and UK Department of Transport about the issue to highlight the continued abuse and mis-selling engaged by online and high street travel agents, as well as unauthorized screenscrapers, who charge consumers with inflated fares and non-existent fuel surcharges. The carrier has called on the consumer agencies to halt this activity.

In response to the accusations, Thomas Cook said that a mistake occurred with the booking, which was cited by the airline. The tour operator issued a statement that said they regret these customers were incorrectly overcharged due to an error in the system. They believe that the case is isolated to the system error, but they will launch a full investigation of the matter, they continued. Thomas Cook said that they will be contacting the customers to offer a full refund. They also added that they haven’t sold Ryanair flights since last fall.

Ryanair wants all of their flights to be sold on their own website, and estimates that about 5,000 flights annually are being sold by screenscraping websites right now. These sites take prices from Ryanair electronically and then sell bookings outside of the Ryanair website. The carrier is now canceling any flights that are made through any other outlets than their website, with up to 100 bookings be canceled every week.

To find out more, go to www.ryanair.com or www.thomascook.com