Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has joked that Elon Musk can join ‘the back of a very, very long queue of people’ who want to insult him after the billionaire called him a series of petty names online in a feud over plane Wi–Fi.
Musk demanded group CEO O’Leary’s sacking after he refused to adopt the billionaire’s Starlink satellite system – and suggested he could buy the budget airline.
He also used derogatory terms for people with learning disabilities to describe the aviation boss, calling him a ‘retarded t***’ and an ‘insufferable, special needs chimp’ in recent posts on social network X, formerly Twitter.
At a press conference in Dublin this morning alongside his number two, Eddie Wilson, O’Leary fired back, launching a ‘Big Idiot’ sale with a pained–looking caricature of Musk as its mascot.
He also thanked Mr Musk for giving his company extra free publicity, for which he offered a free Ryanair ticket in gratitude. And he quickly dismissed suggestions that Musk could take over Ryanair, as the businessman had suggested online.
O’Leary told gathered reporters that while he felt Starlink was a ‘very good system’, he could not justify the estimated €250million(£218m) additional costs in installation and added fuel burn due to the effects of its aerials on drag.
‘I don’t know why he took such umbrage over it,’ O’Leary told reporters on Musk.
‘We have been in discussion with Starlink, his satellite system, for over 12 months now. It is a very good system, we like the Starlink system, it works very well.
‘The problem is if you put it onboard aircraft there is a cost of about €200–250million a year including the cost of installation and then the fuel drag – you have to put not one but two aerials on top of the fuselage.
‘The Starlink people believe 90 per cent of our passengers would happily pay for Wi–Fi access. Our experience sadly tells us less than 10 per cent of passengers pay for access. Therefore we can’t afford to shoulder those costs.’
Michael O’Leary promotes Ryanair’s ‘Big Idiot Sale’ with a picture mocking Elon Musk in Dublin
Elon Musk (pictured in 2023) suggested he could buy budget airline Ryanair in his latest jab towards the airline’s CEO
In a series of posts on X replying to an official airline post, the world’s richest man Elon Musk said Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary ‘needs to be fired’ and called him a ‘retarded t***’
He added that he could not understand why Elon Musk had taken such offence to his ‘reasonably measured’ rationale for not adopting the satellite system.
‘He resorted to insulting me on X, calling me an “idiot”. Yesterday he also rounded on me and called me a “retarded t***”,’ he continued.
‘All I would say to Elon Musk is he would have to join the back of a very, very long queue of people who think I am a retarded t***, including my four teenage children.’
O’Leary said Ryanair would offer 100,000 low–price tickets in its ‘Big Idiot’ Sale – but that Musk would be given one for free that will be delivered to X’s Dublin offices.
This was, he said, ‘to thank him for the wonderful boost in publicity which has seen our bookings rise significantly.’
‘I take no insult at being called an idiot or a t***. As anybody with teenage children would know, I don’t have to go outside to be insulted. But he’s wrong on the fuel drag.’
The Ryanair boss then turned to Musk’s suggestion on X that he could see to buy the airline.
In a series of posts, Musk declared his belief that the Ryanair boss ‘needs to be fired’, and polled his followers on whether to ‘Buy Ryan Air [sic] and restore Ryan as their rightful ruler’.
So far, the poll has received almost 900,000 responses, with 76.6 per cent responding that he should. O’Leary, famed for his outspoken nature, had a few choice words on why this was unlikely.
‘We noticed he was holding a poll on launching a bid for Ryanair. We’re a publicly owned company – he’s free to do so at any time.
‘But non–European citizens cannot own a majority of European airlines. But if he wants to invest in Ryanair we would think it’s a very good investment – certainly a significantly better investment than the financial returns he’s earning on X.’
This is the latest in an online feud between the two bosses, which began with a spat over in–flight Wi–Fi after O’Leary called the billionaire an ‘idiot’ and said he would not buy the South African’s Starlink satellite internet system for his planes.
The online spat began on January 14 when O’Leary dismissed the idea of installing in–flight Wi–Fi across Ryanair’s fleet, expressing concerns over increased fuel consumption.
‘I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk,’ he had told Ireland’s Newstalk.
‘He’s an idiot. Very wealthy, but he’s still an idiot … What Elon Musk knows about flights and drag would be zero.’
Ryanair’s homepage features a caricature of Musk and O’Leary on its homepage promoting the Big Idiot seat sale
O’Leary, seen here arriving at the press conference in Dublin, told reporters that Musk could not buy Ryanair even if he wanted to
His earlier comments had prompted a response from Starlink, the satellite internet service owned by Musk.
Speaking to Reuters, O’Leary said fitting an antenna to the aircraft fuselage would add both weight and drag, resulting in what he described as a ‘two per cent fuel penalty’.
He added that Ryanair’s passengers would be unlikely to pay extra for Wi–Fi on short, one–hour flights.
‘We have to put an aerial antenna on top of the aircraft. It would cost us about $200–250 million dollars a year, in other words, an extra dollar for every passenger we fly.
‘And the reality for us is we can’t afford those costs, passengers won’t pay for internet usage.
‘If it’s free, they’ll use it, but they won’t pay €1 each to use the internet. So we’re not putting it on board.’ He then called X a ‘cesspit’.
Musk responded to the video clip to say: ‘Ryanair CEO is an utter idiot. Fire him’.
The official Ryanair account replied to one post, asking, ‘What is a propaganda you’re not falling for?’, with ‘Wi–Fi on planes’, which led Musk to claim O’Leary needs to be fired.
Tensions rose further after a widespread outage on X left users in the US unable to load feeds or post content.
Ryanair’s social media team seized the moment to mock Musk, posting: ‘Perhaps you need Wi–Fi, @elonmusk?’
While his own posts are widely taken to be provocative rather than serious bids, Musk’s takeover of X, formerly Twitter, began with a surprise offer to buy it after he built up a stake.
Ryanair is listed on the Euronext index in Dublin and its shares have a market capitalisation of about £26.5billion – valuing the firm at £8billion less than the £34.5billion Musk paid for what was then called Twitter in 2022.
The low–cost airline is expecting to fly 207 million passengers over the current financial year – and currently offers no Wi–Fi on board.
Emirates recently announced it was upgrading its entire fleet with ultra–fast Starlink Wi–Fi – making it the world’s largest international airline to offer the service across its network.
Passengers on select Emirates aircraft have been able since last November to stream, video call, game, work and browse social media for free.
The first of Emirates’ 232 Boeing 777 aircraft equipped with Starlink internet was scheduled to enter commercial service, with plans to accelerate installations across the carrier’s fleet at 14 aircraft per month.
