And I thought I’d throw in a bonus topic this week for its insanity. Not sure how much readers know about Stelios Haji-Ioannou, but he is the man behind the “easy” name. The best known easy brand is easyJet, one of the largest airlines in Europe. While Stelios is still the largest shareholder, he doesn’t run the company. He has, however, inserted himself at times and made life difficult for all involved. Now, it appears he’s fed up and wants to start a rival airline, Fastjet or E-jet, to compete with, um, the airline he owns a big chunk of? Riiight. This one is just downright silly.

easyJet was started in 1995 by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. He slapped his famed “easy” brand with bright orange colors on the airline and it took off from there. The initial idea behind easyJet was to be like a Southwest Airlines – low cost, low fare flying all around Europe but initially from its Britain base. I’ve always thought of easyJet as being Ryanair’s more convenient cousin. For example, easyJet flies most to primary airports while Ryanair focuses on alternates. easyJet also hasn’t gone to the extremes of cost cutting in terms of passenger amenities, but there’s a problem.

EasyJet’s on-time performance sucks, and for that reason, Ryanair is infinitely more convenient. You can follow FlightStats to see how dreadful easyJet’s performance has been on a daily basis, but the furor really came out of a report showing that the airline didn’t even get half of its flights out of Gatwick in the air on time in June. It’s not good.

Lots of excuses are coming out of the easyJet headquarters, but nobody really cares. Management has blamed air traffic control strikes, but other airlines don’t seem to be performing as poorly as easyJet. This is where it gets interesting.

Sir Stelios may be intricately tied with easyJet, but he’s pissed. Back in May, he left the board because he’s angry about the airline’s expansion plans, which he thinks won’t add value for shareholders. His family still owns 38 percent of the airline, but he stepped down from the board so he could act solely as a large shareholder to prevent management from going forward with these plans.

The on-time debacle has just added flames to the fire. When Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary came out swinging against easyJet and Sir Stelios for having a terrible on time record and failing to publish it, Sir Stelios got angry. He made it clear that he had nothing to do with it, and that led to one of the strangest things ever. In fact, I’m surprised it didn’t cause a rip in the space-time continuum.

O’Leary apologized. In print. No, he didn’t apologize to easyJet but rather to Sir Stelios for implicating him in the airline’s failures. Sir Stelios has taken that apology and started a crusade of his own against easyJet. He is now threatening the airline by saying that if on-time performance doesn’t improve within 90 days, he’s pulling the brand license. Yeehaw, this is getting good.

Sir Stelios had already been angry about the use of the brand, and this just adds flames to the fire. See, brand license requires that the airline generate at least 75% of its revenues from the core business of flying. This is meant to protect other easy-branded companies that have their own spheres. The airline, however, is arguing that the way that number is calculated is bull. So the two have been going at it in court.

In the end, this is just a disaster. How can an airline focus on running a business when its embroiled in a massive fight with its founder and 38% shareholder? It really can’t. I don’t blame Sir Stelios. He’s acting in his best interests, as he should. This whole thing is just a mess, and ultimately passengers will be screwed.

[Original photo via Flickr user alistairmcmillan]

If they want a third airport, that’s there own business, but now all the noise complaints caused them to run a study. According to Ryanair, the results prove that there isn’t a huge noise issue, but the region’s government is still looking to shrink or shut the airport anyway. It wouldn’t surprise me.

Raise your hand if you know who would get the biggest benefit by having Ryanair and EasyJet move to the far away Viterbo airport. That’s right, it’s our good friends at Alitalia.

If anyone knows more about this story AND speaks English, hit the comments. By the way, if you just want to complain about the noise around the airport, don’t bother. That airport is one of the oldest in the world – it’s been there since 1916 – so you knew what was there when you moved in.

As you can see, the plan is to use a different type of engine to power this guy. The unducted fan is basically what you’d see inside an engine today but without the casing that you see on every other jet flying. According to easyJet, this will “offer unrivalled environmental performance due to their higher propulsive efficiency.” This type of engine has been studied by manufacturers for years, but it hasn’t made it to a commercial jet yet.

Another distinct feature you can’t really see from this picture is that the wing is swept forward to reduce drag. This is definitely an airplane that would catch your eye at the airport. You’ll have to wait until 2015 to see it though . . . that’s the targeted launch.

So will it actually get built?

Probably not in its current form. This was designed internally by easyJet, so you know once Boeing and Airbus get their hands on it, it would change significantly. This is basically just an easyJet PR grab to announce that they want the big manufacturers to make more efficient planes. Though this big splash may not actively accomplish anything, the signal it sends to Boeing and Airbus is that demand for a new plane is there, and it’s demand that ultimately gets a new plane built. Of course, they could have done this in private discussions with the manufacturers, but then they wouldn’t have gotten all the buzz and goodwill they’re likely to get from a more public announcement.

Look at Southwest, for example. The granddaddy of open seating has stuck with their strategy for over 30 years. Many airlines have seen it as a negative, so they’ve tried to exploit it. In what was probably America West’s best commercial, the airline tried to say that flying Southwest was like being in a mosh pit. Click here to watch (.wmv file).

But through all of this, Southwest never budged until this summer when they decided to run some assigned seating tests to see if it was worth switching from their time-honored tradition. While many people bemoaned the open seating concept, the backlash from loyal customers was truly amazing. Look at this blog post by Southwest CEO Gary Kelly. There were 605 comments on it, most of which appear to be against changing to assigned seating. The issue appears to have quietly disappeared for now.

In Europe, many of the low frills guys have followed in Southwest’s footsteps in having open seating on board. But while Southwest has shied away from charging for every individual piece of the flight experience separately, European LCCs have embraced it. And that’s why it’s surprising that it’s taken so long for them to charge for better seating.

Now, Easyjet has announced the introduction of Speedy Boarding. Now when you buy your ticket, you will be given the option to pay between GBP2.50 and GBP7.50 to head to the front of the line for pre-boarding. It appears that this will be offered until twenty people have taken them up on it. There won’t be assigned seating, but with only 20 other people boarding in that group, you’ll have your pick of seats.

Why the range in price? Well, longer flights will cost more, of course. In addition, some flights are boarded by busses to remote stands. There is no way to guarantee that those twenty will be the first off the bus, so it’s not guaranteed. That’s why those flights will be cheaper.

It makes sense to me for the Easyjet model. The idea is to make as much ancillary revenue as possible. At least 20 people on each flight will be happy to pay more just to have piece of mind in knowing they’ll get a good seat.