Ryanair has been forced to issue a grovelling retraction and apology to Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou in today’s Guardian newspaper after previously including his photograph in a series of ads which inferred that the easyjet head had lied over alleged flight delays.

In the statement Michael O’Leary and Ryanair “unreservedly apologised” for dubbing the low fare rival as “easyjet’s Mr Late Again” and calling on Haji to “stop hiding the truth.”

Ryanair have undertaken not to publish the advert again and have agreed to pay damages and legal costs to resolve the libel claim.

This fulsome apology contained a sting in the tail however, concluding: Both Michael O’Leary and Ryanair accept that Sir Stelios is not responsible for the non publication of easyjet’s on-time statistics for the past 52 weeks and that he is not in any way responsible for easyjet’s management’s continuing failure to publish weekly details of their on-time stats.”