Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of Easyjet, has said that he would take a legal action against rival carrier Ryanair’s chief executive Michael O’Leary over an advertising campaign that tried to defame him by depicting him with a Pinocchio-style long nose.

In its recent advertising campaign, the Irish-carrier Ryanair insinuated that the Luton-based Easyjet lied about its punctuality statistics by depicting Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou as a Pinocchio figure.

Official reports have confirmed that owner of EasyJet, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou is all set to slap a lawsuit on Michael O’Leary, accusing the Chief Executive of Ryanair of "despicable behavior”, all thanks to an advertising campaign which characterized the Greek entrepreneur as Pinnochio, thereby implying that he had lied about EasyJet’s punctuality statistics.

£8m (€9m) investment was confirmed by Ryanair for a new aircraft maintenance facility at Glasgow Prestwick Airport. A major expansion is planned following the announcement made yesterday regarding new routes and the base that is the biggest maintenance base.

No-frills airline Ryanair has raised its profit guidance for the full-year to €275 million, up from its earlier forecast of attaining the lower end of a €200 million to €300 million range, as it saw a sharp decline in third-quarter losses.

The Irish airline said its losses plunged to €10.9 million during the three months to the end of December as compared with losses of €118.8 million in the year ago period.

Revenue jumped from €604.5 to settle at €612 million, representing a gain of 1 per cent.

European no-frills carrier Ryanair has announced that it would reward its shareholders with a cash payout of around 1 billion pounds from 2013.

Ryanair has decided not to buy 200 aircraft from Boeing, in a move that will cut back its capital spending considerably in the approaching years.

Commenting on the issue, the budget airline Ryanair said, "We expect our current cash reserves of £2.2bn to grow substantially by March 2013 and we plan to distribute surplus cash to shareholders from that date."

During the month of December, Irish budget carrier Ryanair witnessed a 12% growth in Traffic as travelers continued to make the most of the firm's low fares over the Holiday season.

As many as 4.9 million passengers were flown by the company over the month, as compared to the figure of 4.37 million passengers recorded for December 2008. Load factor, which is the measure of how full the airplanes are, jumped by 2 percentage points to 82%.

Now online bookings will require the customers to pay more. The Irish low-cost airline Ryanair is now charging additional fees for online bookings of tickets.

John Fingleton, chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), condemned the airline company for the new fee charged from the passengers named as "quite puerile”.

Boeing seems to have lost a large order for the moment when the on-going negotiations with Ryan-air for 200 aircrafts fell through. The manufacturer was supposed to supply these 200 aircrafts between 2103 and 2016, increasing the Ryanair fleet strength. As stated by Michael O'Leary, Chief Executive of Ryan-air, the problem lay with "a bunch of numpties out in Seattle" who he says couldn’t come to a decision.

Ryanair was yesterday marked as the "worst family brand" in a list compiled after an extensive survey undertaken by FamilyBrands, to rate nearly 100 famous firms ranging from Asda to Andrex. The brands included in the survey were ranked by 1,500 UK residents based on "how they treat families or their social responsibility", among other criteria.

Ryanair's 2010 charity calendar, which reportedly features scantily clad employees, has managed to create a strong media storm and the carrier is now facing lots of criticism, including some from the National Women's Council of Ireland which has called the airline "irredeemably old-fashioned" while accusing it of possessing it a "serious lack of imagination."

In a slew of additional charges imposed by the utilitarian airline Ryanair, the cost of checking in a bag will be increased by as much as 50 percent, October onwards! While the cost of checking a bag in at the airport would rise from £20 to £30; that of checking it online will increase from £10 to £15; and checking in of a second bag would go up from £35 to £70.