Brussels court partially upholds Ryanair practices, confirms cabin bag policy is lawful

The Brussels Enterprise (Commercial) Court has delivered a mixed ruling on Ryanair’s online booking practices following an injunction action brought by consumer group TestAchats/TestAankoop.

Crucially, the court fully confirmed that Ryanair’s cabin baggage policy complies with EU law, in line with Regulation 1008/2008 and the Court of Justice of the EU’s Vueling judgment. The court ruled that Ryanair lawfully includes one free under-seat bag of reasonable size in its basic fare and is not legally required to include a larger overhead-locker bag. Claims by TestAchats to the contrary were explicitly rejected as lacking merit.

The court also dismissed several other complaints raised by TestAchats, finding no illegality in:

• Ryanair’s demand-based pricing
• Seat selection practices, including family seating policies
• The airline’s presentation of baggage options during booking

In addition, the court found that TestAchats does not meet the legal criteria for “qualified entity” status, significantly limiting its ability to bring representative consumer actions and to benefit from procedural advantages under EU law.

However, the court did rule against Ryanair on specific marketing and transparency practices, notably:

• The use of bundled fare packages
• Scarcity messages such as “only X seats left at this price”
• Discount advertising using false reference prices
• Failure to clearly display separate outbound and return prices for checked baggage

Ryanair has been ordered to amend these practices within three months, under penalty of a €5,000 daily fine if it fails to comply.

Overall, the ruling strongly reinforces the legality of Ryanair’s core pricing and baggage model, while requiring targeted changes to certain promotional and price-display practices.