(FORTUNE Magazine) – The scion of a Greek shipping magnate, Haji-Iannou started his Stelmar tanker company in 1992. Since then he has founded easyJet, which aims to be a European version of Southwest Airlines; the easyInternetCafe chain; and easyRentacar. The 34-year-old entrepreneur works in London and was interviewed by cell phone as he sat in a Manhattan coffee shop.

How has business changed since Sept. 11?

We've been closely monitoring ticket sales at easyJet, and it's almost business as usual. People are beginning to trade down to a discount airline like easyJet instead of choosing British Airways or KLM. This is what we expected, but it's never been tested because we're only six years old and we've never been through a downturn. Our car-rental company seems completely unaffected.

The only business I have in the U.S. is Internet cafes. I'm in New York looking for additional locations. With others cutting back, it may be the best time to invest in New York.

If you have a robust biz model with a low cost base--I'm a great believer in that--you can do well now. When every airline in the world has been canceling orders for aircraft, we're talking with Boeing and about to order more. I certainly wouldn't say Sept. 11 has been a good thing, but this is a time to invest and accelerate capital spending and advertising.

Is anything worse for you now?

It's more difficult to raise debt. Also, several months ago we started easyMoney, a MasterCard business. Its second product was meant to be unsecured consumer loans. We'll wait now, because a recession is probably not the best time to be lending people money unsecured.

We had built into our business model recession-proof characteristics. It's one of those things you really hope not to have to test, but it certainly entered into my decision whether to launch a high-cost or low-cost airline. If my heart was telling me to go business class, my head was telling me to go low cost. I had always traveled business class, but when I looked at the business of aviation, I realized that the only way to make money was to go low cost. Look at South-west. Its market cap is more than the other top five airlines combined. Our market cap right now is more than twice that of UAL Corp.

Will doing business internationally change?

I was very close to signing a franchise deal for the easyInternetCafe in Egypt before the 11th. That's on hold. The last thing I want to do now is worry about whether Cairo locals perceive us as allies or foes--Hewlett-Packard is a big partner of ours. Maybe in a year's time we'll go back and open the shop and nobody will remember it was ever an issue. But when you see American flags burning, I'm not sure you should go and invest.