If you're traveling for the upcoming holidays, you might think that a "passenger bill of rights" is supposed to have kicked in already, so you don't have to worry about being stuck on a plane sitting on the runway for more than 4 hours. That probably won't happen, but if the weather is bad, be prepared to have your flight canceled instead. Here are just a few interesting links on airline operations.

• A while ago, an open letter to American Airlines pleaded with them to re-design their website. A few years later, it looks like aa.com has become a bit easier on the eyes. (Too bad Mr. X had to be fired in the process, though.) [url]
• Ryanair got some attention for floating the idea of in-flight porn. But any flight with an internet connection already has porn... [url]
• The US govt has issued its first hefty fine ($900,000) for an airline keeping passengers waiting for more than 3 hours in a plane. However, airlines are simply canceling a lot more flights to try to avoid these kinds of penalties. [url]
• To discover more interesting business-related content, check out what the deal is on StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

European discount airline Ryanair is somewhat famous for their near total lack of concern about customer happiness. The airline, at times, seems almost gleeful about the complaints it gets from customers. Still, it seems to go pretty far to completely shrug off a security hole that allows others to edit your bookings (found via Glyn Moody). Basically, some researchers discovered that if you know someone's email address and the date (and locations) that they're planning to fly, you can access their account and even adjust and manipulate the bookings. That's because the site apparently does not use passwords, but just those bits of information. What's really stunning is Ryanair's response:

"Your 'experts' are talking complete rubbish. If someone's lunatic ex-partner wants to access a flight booking and pay for priority boarding or extra baggage for the person they just split up from then they all have a lot more to worry about than a simple amended flight booking. It is everyone's individual responsibility to keep their personal information personal."

That's from Ryanair spokesman Daniel de Carvalho. Anyone taking bets on how long until someone changes one of de Carvalho's own flight bookings?

For many years, we've discussed the legality of so-called "sucks sites." These are, generally speaking, sites that people put up about a brand that they've had a bad experience with, that goes by something along the lines of brandsucks.com. While there has been some back and forth, for the most part, people and domain dispute boards have recognized that such "sucks sites" should be allowed. They're not infringing on trademarks, in that they don't, for the most part, lead to any confusion over who is running the domain, or if the company in question actually endorses the site (unlikely in most cases).

So it was interesting to see the news that a guy who ran IHateRyanair.co.uk was forced to turn over the domain name to the company. It was double surprising, because four years ago, we had written about another sucks site, called RyanairCampaign.org that was allowed to keep its domain. So what gives here? Well, it turns out that it wasn't a normal domain resolution process that is normally used over domain trademark disputes. Instead, Ryanair went straight to the registry -- which, in this case, was Nominet, and apparently Nominet's policies are much more stringent. The company even admits this, saying that the traditional UDRP domain resolution process probably would have let him keep the domain, but they decided it offends their stricter policies. Why? Because on the page he had some affiliate links that earned him £322. And, even though he took down the links, and agreed to sign documents that he wouldn't put them back, they still felt it violated their policies.

This is, frankly, ridiculous. Earning a little bit of cash from a website does not automatically make it such that it's just being done "for the money," as is implied by this ruling. Besides with the amount made, it probably didn't do much more than covering hosting fees. This is really an unfortunate decision, and could certainly chill some forms of speech in making it much more difficult to cover your costs in hosting a public advocacy website against a company. Perhaps someone needs to set up Nominetsucks.co.uk. Of course, all is not lost for the original domain holder, who has simply moved his site to IHateRyanair.org, and hopefully to a less ridiculous registrar.

Ryanair, the discount Irish airline famous for incredibly cheap fares, combined with massive charges for anything extra (recently, it's talked seriously about charging for bathroom access), announced that passengers would need to check in online, or face a large additional charge of £40. Yet... just a month later, it announced that it needs to take down its website for a whole 10 hours for maintenance purposes. So, if you're planning to check-in or fly during that time period, you might be in a bit of trouble. Regulators aren't pleaseed either, noting that it's irresponsible of the company to both require online check-in and to close down the website for a significant period of time.

A few weeks back, we wrote about Ryanair's decision to cancel flight tickets that had been bought by travelers via third party websites. This made no sense to us whatsoever. These third party websites were acting as resellers, and doing something that seemed perfectly legal: providing new avenues for travelers to buy Ryanair tickets. And then to have Ryanair flat-out cancel the tickets without any refund just seemed to do the opposite: to piss off travelers who had happily paid for Ryanair tickets.

The airline is now defending the decision, but is doing an awful job of it. First, it complains that these other sites were jacking up the price on Ryanair tickets. Fair enough, but if the travelers were still willing to pay those fees, where's the problem? Everyone got what they wanted in that scenario, as opposed to the current scenario where everyone is worse off: the travelers are out money without the plane tickets they thought they had bought, Ryanair has a bunch of really pissed off customers and the third party sites are none too happy as well. How is that possibly a better situation?

Then Ryanair claims that these 3rd party sites are violating its copyright in reselling its tickets, but it's difficult to see how such a claim could stick. First of all, as long as the sites are legitimately passing on the lead or buying the tickets themselves, then where's the copyright violation? It's certainly not in visiting Ryanair's website. It's not in displaying the prices (which Ryanair admits are different than its own, and prices aren't copyrightable anyway). So, again, we're left wondering how this move could possibly make sense for Ryanair?

Update: As pointed out in the comments by discojohnson, the original article at the Independent reports that refunds were given to the websites involved, but the decision to refund the customers themselves was then left to up to those particular websites. We have corrected this post to reflect that clarification.

And people wonder why airlines have so much trouble staying in business? We were already confused enough by American Airlines' desire not to be listed on the sites where people search for airfare, and easyJet's plan to sue the sites that send it customers, but Irish-based airline Ryanair is taking this all to a new level. Beyond just being upset about those 3rd party sites (i.e., sites that send it business!), it's planning to cancel the flights for everyone who booked through one of those services (thanks to Sean for the link).

Yes, we understand that these airlines prefer people to purchase flights from the airlines directly, but it still seems bizarre to try to cut off a great promotional channel. People already know to go look at 3rd party sites for airfare, so actively working against having your flights promoted doesn't make much sense. Then actively pissing off a bunch of your customers who booked through those sites by canceling their flights is even more braindead, as you've just formed a huge group of customers who will complain about your airline and spread the word about how you canceled their legitimately purchased flight for no reason other than spite and a confusion over business models. When Ryanair started promoting how some of its seats might come with sexual gratification, I'd bet many passengers didn't realize it would end with them getting screwed.