The airline has taken on a more agent-friendly stance in recent years. Just last month Ryanair hosted more than 80 agents for an event at Manchester airport to mark new German routes.

A spokesperson for the airline insisted Ryanair’s fares were only available on Ryanair.com or through its GDS partners Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport, and that third parties booking outside of the GDS platforms were not authorised to sell its fares.

But agents last week voiced their concern at being labelled as potentially “unauthorised” by seemingly being lumped together with screenscrapers.

One travel agent posted an email from Ryanair on the Travel Gossip Facebook page, which had been inadvertently sent to him.

“We believe you may have booked your trip via an unauthorised third-party agent,” the email begins, before stating how much the “agent” had been charged by the airline, and then warning that the customer “may have paid more”.

“To avoid any intermediary ‘fees’ in the future, please ensure you book your flights directly with Ryanair.com,” it added.

Ryanair told TTG the email was intended to prevent customers incurring extra charges from screenscraper websites – those which unlawfully scrape the airline’s lowest fares and sell them on at inflated prices.

They added that only customers who had booked through an unauthorised third party would have received the email. “We have sent this email to customers who have not booked directly on the Ryanair.com website, to prevent our customers from being subjected to extra charges by screenscraper websites,” the spokesperson continued.

“Many of these websites continue to cause problems for Ryanair customers and can fail or refuse to pass on vital information to both customers and Ryanair regarding issues such as flight changes, web check-in, special needs assistance and contact details, which has resulted in missed flights and repeated problems for customers.”

Shona Thorne, managing director of Ayrshire-based Thorne Travel in Scotland, which uses Ryanair’s own website to book fares, said she was “shocked” by news of the email.

“We use Ryanair a lot – they’re a massive seller for us, daily. They’re not the easiest supplier to deal with but I’m shocked they’ve come back with that.”

She said the agency had “never seen an email like that”, but added that it used its own agency email address for bookings rather than those of its customers.

Thorne said the airline always offered the agency “exceptional service through their live chat”.

But she added: “I would say they definitely need agents – they wouldn’t get as many customers without us. And we insist that all our customers pre-book their seats so they don’t have to worry about it in-resort, which also means extra revenue for Ryanair.”

London-based Trade Wings Travel’s managing director Vishal Patel added: “Ryanair doesn’t value agents – there’s a stark difference between how easyJet deals with agents and how Ryanair does.

“Ryanair needs to work with agents in the same way we need to work with it, but I think it would drop agents the moment it thought it could do without them.”