Ryanair's decision to close its site for maintenance does not impress web industry

The planned closure of Ryanair’s web site for a few days will be at a huge cost to the business, and could be avoided, according to managed service provider NTT Europe.

Last August the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) took action against 13 airlines that had misleading costs on their web sites. Although the other airlines have all made the changes, Ryanair had difficulties. The OFT kept giving Ryanair new deadlines, first the end of January 2008 and then the 15th of February, but Ryanair has still failed to comply.

Now Ryanair has told the OFT that it will have to shutdown its site for three days to meet OFT’s demands, according to a report in the Times, although a spokesman for Ryanair said he could not comment due to the lack of a press department.

Len Padilla, NTT Europe Online senior director for engineering, expects the web site shutdown will cost Ryanair £20m, but said, “Any major transitional period for a website should not result in lost revenue or competitor advantage.”

Padilla said there was technology available that will prevent lost revenue from the effects of downtime. “Having separate environments dedicated to development, pre-production and production can help mitigate a situation such as this. These environments act as mirrors to the live site, allowing changes and updates to be prepared and launched seamlessly.”