Apologies if I'm being obtuse, but no one seems to have spotted that there are actually 3 types of carrier in the scheduled game these days, rather than full service/budget. The budget carriers actually break down into 2 categories - those that are trying to undercut the majors on matching routes (ie Easyjet, Flybe) and those that are trying to put leisure passengers somewhere near(ish) where they want to be (ie Ryanair). As such I'm not convinced that Easyjet and Ryanair are really direct competitors. Of course they have many things in common, and compete on a handful of routes, but I reckon that Ryanair aim at leisure travellers (though happy to collect any business travellers who come along) whereas Easyjet aim at a more even balance, which probably allows them to charge slightly higher average fares (as opposed to the headline fares) which covers the increased costbase of using more major airports. Easyjet then have a balancing act between charging a bit more than Ryanair, but keeping the costs low enough to undercut the majors. The bucket and spade flights they do are a bit different, as they are not competing with the majors as much as the charters (and their scheduled incarnations), but here I think they are competing on the convenience of daily flights as much as price.
As such it is sometimes hard to understand the obsession that Easyjet and Ryanair have for each others antics, but I suppose it gives their respective
PR departments something to fill their day.