Early on this week, aviation entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou announced plans for Fastjet – a start-up rival for established operators such as Ryanair.

But in a curious turn of events, the launch of the service is likely to bring the Athens-born businessman into conflict with the budget airline that he famously founded – easyJet.

Relations between easyJet and Sir Stelios have been decidedly uneasy in the last 18 months.

Despite the fact that the tycoon and their family still own 38 per cent of the airline that he began from the begining in 1995 (with a £5million loan from his shipping-magnate father), discussions involving the two parties have already been icy since Haji-Ioannou resigned from the actual carrier’s board in May 2010 in a row over strategy.

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said: ‘By charging for the toilets we are hoping to change passenger behaviour so that they use the bathroom before or after the flight.’That will enable us to remove two out of three of the toilets and make way for at least six extra seats.

I wonder how long it will before disgruntled passengers will simply hold the door open for the next passenger. If this is going to be policed by air staff then that’s extra cost for Ryanair.

Where will they stop? Charging you for oxygen? Make you clean the plane?

Ryanair reported annual passenger traffic of more than 70 million for the first time today. However, its figures were inflated by close to 1.5 million passengers who did not fly because their flights were cancelled during the ash crisis.

The no-frills giant reported a 13% rise year on year in passengers in July to 7.61 million – the most it has ever carried in a month.

This took its total for the past 12 months to 70.1 million. But the figures are for passengers booked, not carried.

Ryanair revealed 1.45 million were booked on flights that were cancelled “due to the unnecessary closures of parts of European airspace”.

Any trip overseas should be accommpanied by good travel insurance seniors in case you fall ill.

It’s hard to know what fees Ryanair will introduce next but I wouldn’t put it past them charging passengers for getting to their destination alive, says the Daily Mirrir in the UK!

Paying for a Ryanair flight ticket is merely a passport to spend more money.

Priority boarding, luggage fees, scratchcards, sandwiches that taste like scratchcards, you name it Ryanair charge for it. They plan to charge even if you don’t name it.

They’ve threatened for ages to impose a toilet tax so can you imagine what they’ll spread on their sandwiches if that goes ahead? Probably exactly what they spread on them now.

A toilet tax is the 6-4 favourite in the Hills market asking what Ryanair will introduce next. But there’s heavy support – from 10-1 to 8-1 – for a pounds-for-pounds charge, where the heavier you are the more you pay.

If you are travelling around  europe then ensure you have travel insurance for the over 70s to cover you.

They will probably start charging for oxygen next!

So, passengers must now jump through another hoop to avoid Ryanair’s heinous extra charges, but it isn’t the only baddie of the airline world. There are plenty of ther carriers charging pounds for a transaction that costs a few pence, particularly in the case of debit card transactions.

Ryanair has reduced the number of flights departing from London Stanstead by 30 per cent from October. Despite these cutbacks, the budget airline has said it has reduced fares on flights by a 13 per cent average. However, despite this attempt to attract more custom, net profits for the year are expected to fall short of the estimated figures.

However rivals Easyjet maintain they should reach their end of year profit margins, confidence stemming from third quarter revenues rising 12 per cent. Plans for the future include an expansion of 35 new aircraft by 2012, although founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou is said to be concerned over the proposed rate of expansion.

If you are flying with Easyjet or Ryanair you should take out appropriate travel medical insurance too as EHIC cards might not cover you for all issue.

By making passengers squat on stools, albeit with seatbelts around their waists, Ryanair estimates it would increase capacity by 30 per cent while slashing costs by 20 per cent.

Chief executive Michael O’Leary has held talks with the plane manufacturer Boeing about designing an aircraft with standing room, an idea initially developed by China’s first private airline, Spring Airlines, who have described the arrangement as akin to ‘bar stools’.

This new proposal follows a series of increasingly far-fetched cost-cutting ventures from the airline, who last month announced plans to make passengers carry all their own luggage up to planes instead of checking them in.

Ryanair and Wizz Air are among airlines interested in the possibility of turning an airfield in the Champagne region into a hub for low-cost carriers serving Paris, Christelle Riguet, a spokeswoman for Vatry airport, said Friday.

The airfield would provide easy access to Paris, just 39 minutes away from the nearby city of Reims by high-speed TGV rail. Local authorities have pledged to put in place bus service that could reach the Disneyland Paris theme park to the west.

Representatives from the Irish and Hungarian budget airlines attended a presentation about plans to make Paris Vatry, an international freight cargo airport located 100 miles east of Paris, into the French capital’s low-cost airport, Riguet said.

The two low-cost carriers “are interested,” Riguet said.

The airline is called blu-express and have been operating out of Rome and Milan, providing mainly cheap flights across Europe with occasional long haul flights to Cuba, but for EUR 700.

We are not quite sure how they can provide such credit crunching cheap flights but book them soon because they are only available in May and June.

European air passengers could be faced with a much smaller selection of low-cost airlines to choose from when they go on their holidays, analysts warn.

Europe currently boasts around 50 no-frills airlines but that number is expected to shrink dramatically over the next few years, with analysts warning that the market is far too crowded.

Going on developments in the US market, where many low-cost airlines have flopped, Mr Stewart believes the market could thin down to just three or four key players.

The European low-cost airline sector continues to welcome in new players each month, drawn by low interest rates and a high availability of second-hand planes.

Big names such as Ryanair, easyJet and Air Berlin, and the low-cost wings of traditional airlines – such as the UK’s bmibaby – are expected to stay the course.

If you are traveling to Europe and looking for travel insurance over 80 then check out the link for some great deals.