EASYJET, Europe's second-largest discount airline, surprised analysts last week by posting better-than-expected results for the fourth quarter of 2011. Revenue rose 16.7% to £763m ($1.19 billion) and passenger numbers increased over 8% to nearly 13m. Revenue per seat, an industry benchmark, was up 7.7%. As Reuters notes, much of the growth was driven by business travel: Last year, easyJet agreed a string of deals aimed at giving it a larger share of the business travel market.The airline said some 200,000 more business passengers flew with the carrier in the quarter year-on-year, despite a general decline in business travel. That seems like good news for the airline and Carolyn McCall, who took over as CEO in March 2010. And it's not surprising that business travel is at least partially driving easyJet's better results—many airlines are dependent on business travel for their bottom lines. But all is not well at easyJet: Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who founded the company and still owns the plurality of its shares, is not happy. He says easyJet has exaggerated how much business-travel bookings have helped it, and argues that the airline is paying its executives far too much
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