TENS of thousands of intending Ryanair passengers could find their bookings cancelled over the coming days.

The airline yesterday said it would annul all bookings made through third party websites. In a move described as “totally unreasonable” by the Consumers’ Association, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said the new policy would apply to anyone travelling after next Monday.

The hardline stance affects anyone who booked their Ryanair flights through websites like lastminute.com, v-tours, tui and Opodo.

About 1,000 people use these websites to book Ryanair flights every day, which means 20,000 passengers will be affected by the clampdown if bookings are made an average of 20 days in advance.

Ryanair will give refunds to all of the websites involved, Mr O’Leary said, but passing on those refunds to intending passengers would be a matter for the websites.

“We want to cause as much chaos for the [websites] as possible,” he said.