The Airline news and travel blog service

When my colleague Jasper Kelly wrote his article about Sir Stellios taking exception to being, as he put it, called a liar by Ryanair's Michael O'Leary, see Pinocchio - dreaming of being real, we had a sweepstake in the office as to how this would turn out.

To an extent, I have some sympathy with Sir Stellios. The battle between the two leading low-cost airlines is good for the public and good for the media but does have to be conducted with a certain degree of decorum. Calling your business opponent a liar over published punctuality figures is probably unnecessary when the travelling public can draw their own conclusions from experience. For Michael O'Leary, it was all in a days work. He dishes it out and accepts it in equal measure. Sir Stellios felt that it was a slight too far. In any event, it generated good publicity for both companies.

The undisclosed damages, which we understand to be token, will probably go to charity and both men will carry on their combative competition as before. As someone put it after the victory, Sir Stellios was standing up for the small guys who travel with his rival and have to put up with their abusively low fares and increasing high add-on costs.

All in all, a good day out for the legal profession and the court room hacks. Meanwhile, in the real world ....