ihateryanair.co.uk, a website set up by a disgruntled passenger and dedicated to criticising Ryanair, has been forced to close and hand the domain name over to the airline.

Established by Robert Tyler in 2007 following a ‘stressful’ flight with his wife and newborn baby, the site relayed “horror stories” about the budget airline who Tyler labelled “the world's most hated airline”.

Tyler was taken to a domain name tribunal after Ryanair complained that the site took unfair advantage of the Ryanair name for commercial gain and was detrimental to its rights. This was due to Tyler earning money through the web address from commercial links to third party websites.

Internet domain name dispute resolution service Nominet then ruled that Tyler had breached rules in using the brand name for profit and ordered him to forfeit the domain name.

Adjudicator Jane Seager ruled that “it cannot be fair to take advantage of the reputation attached to another party’s trade mark in this manner, whether it be good or bad.”

Seager stressed however that Tyler’s profiting from the web address was the only reason behind her decision, adding: “In a free and open society internet users should generally be able to post comments on their recent experiences or on current events, as long as such postings do not fall foul of the law.

“Any resulting disruption as a result of criticism appearing on a website (or in any other media for that matter) is merely something that businesses have to deal with on a daily basis.”

Tyler remains committed to his cause however, simply moving the site from its .co.uk domain name to .org and removing links.

An update posted on the site reads: “Unfortunately, Lyingair won the dispute on a small technicality concerning €365 generated through affiliate deals, but never fear, we have already moved the site to its new home on www.ihateryanair.org and will continue to provide you with all the latest on how this pathetic excuse for an airline will attempt to extract cash from you through sneaky hidden charges, fly you to places that are not where you actually want to go and leave you stranded when the cr*p hits the fan.”