Haji-Ioannou tributes his airline's success to family fortunes and being in the right place ? Luton ? at the right time
To the relief of his passengers, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou said it would be "stupid" to charge easyJet passengers to use the toilets at 33,000ft. But there's a fee for just about everything else, and the toilets themselves are just an "ancillary service".
The comment came in the high court last year as Haji-Ioannou, who prefers to be known as just Stelios, pursued one of his many legal battles.
Court rivals have included easyJet itself, arch-rival Ryanair and companies which have dared to use the word 'easy' ? even a one-man driving school in north London.
Relations at the top of easyJet have been anything but easy since Haji-Ioannou floated the company in 2000. Haji-Ioannou, who remains the company's biggest shareholder with a 37% stake controlled by his family, attempted to bring the "cheap and cheerful" strategy at easyJet to internet cafes, hotels, pizzas, cruise lines and even gyms where you have to pay an extra pound for a towel. Several easyGroup ventures have failed, and Haji-Ioannou has admitted he was "just lucky with easyJet".
"The unbelievable thing with easyJet is I took an enormous risk with my family's fortune back in the 90s and I was lucky to have been in the right place, which believe it or not was Luton, and at the right time ? mid-90s when the European airline industry was deregulating ? and with the right father, to give me a lot of money to bet on new aircraft . And it worked," he told the Guardian in 2008.
Haji-Ioannou, who is regularly parodied on TV, divides public opinion like Marmite with a number of his subordinates falling into the 'hate him' camp. In less than a year between 2009 and 2010 five of his easyGroup executives were fired or quit the company, with the CEO of easyOffice said to have been sacked by email.
"If you haven't worked for the guy, you can't believe what he does," Lawrence Alexander, an ex-easyHotel chief executive, has said. "Outside the boardroom he's charming. Inside the boardroom he would frequently accuse suppliers and management of ripping him off and taking backhanders."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/26/i-was-lucky-easyjet-stelios
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