What’s Going On With Elon Musk and Ryanair? Here’s What You Need to Know

By Jason Nelson

Elon Musk is in a social media spat with a CEO, threatening a costly acquisition of a multi-billion-dollar company and a change in leadership. Sound familiar? Here’s what’s going on.

At the root of it is Elon Musk’s push to bring SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet to commercial airlines. The problem, as Musk sees it, is he’s running into an obstacle named Ryanair. What it boils down to is a public feud between the tech billionaire and Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary that’s revealed the friction between the promise of high-speed internet on airliners and the economics of low-cost flights.

The feud began after O’Leary confirmed that Europe’s largest budget carrier would not install Starlink across its fleet of more than 600 aircraft. While Musk has successfully courted premium carriers like Qatar Airways and United Airlines, Ryanair represents a critical test of whether the satellite service can scale to the "no-frills" sector.

O’Leary said the economics did not add up. “You need to put antenna on the fuselage. It comes with a 2% fuel penalty because of the weight and drag,” Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary told Reuters. “We don’t think our passengers are willing to pay for WiFi for an average one-hour flight.”

Founded in Ireland in 1984, Ryanair is known for its no-frills model built around aggressive pricing and strict cost controls. That approach has made the airline one of Europe’s most profitable carriers, with a market capitalization of about $36.6 billion.

Musk pushed back, arguing that O’Leary overstated the fuel impact and misunderstood Starlink’s technology. In posts on X last week, Musk said the drag increase would be negligible and suggested Ryanair’s analysis was flawed.

“I doubt they can even measure the difference in fuel use accurately, especially for a one-hour flight, where the incremental drag is basically zero during the ascent phase due to high angle of attack,” Musk wrote. “And compared to most other connectivity solutions, there would actually be gains in efficiency.”

The disagreement soon turned personal.

After Musk questioned O’Leary’s grasp of aircraft performance, the Ryanair chief dismissed Musk’s aviation expertise and brushed off the criticism.

“Musk knows even less about airline ownership rules than he does about aircraft aerodynamics,” O’Leary said during a press conference in Dublin on Wednesday.

Both executives are known for confrontational public messaging. Musk frequently uses X to engage critics directly, and referred to O’Leary in one post as “a retarded twat.”

Ryanair quickly leaned into the attention, launching a “Big Idiot” fare promotion tied to the dispute. O’Leary later said the publicity helped boost bookings.

“He wouldn’t be the first, and he certainly won’t be the last to call me an idiot or a retarded twat,” O’Leary said. “If it helps to boost Ryanair sales, you can insult me all day, every day.”

The clash even sparked a hypothetical discussion of a takeover of Ryanair. When Musk polled his followers on Friday on whether he should buy the airline and put an actual Ryan in charge, users on X were quick to jokingly suggest Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds, as the obvious candidate.

Still, some users offered The Notebook’s Ryan Gosling and host Ryan Seacrest as the right person for the job.

Prediction market traders on Myriad, a platform developed by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, appear skeptical that Musk will follow through. The market currently places odds at about 4% that a “Ryan” will be running the airline before April.

Memes aside, however, O’Leary pointed out that EU law forbids non-EU citizens from owning a controlling stake in a European carrier.

“Non-European citizens cannot own a majority of European airlines,” O’Leary said. “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.”

Cost, Drag, and Demand

O’Leary estimated that installation costs combined with higher fuel burn would add roughly $200 million to $250 million a year across Ryanair’s fleet. He also questioned demand, saying fewer than 10% of Ryanair customers would be willing to pay for onboard internet on short-haul European routes.

For now, the rejection suggests that for budget airlines, technical capability remains secondary to the bottom line. Even so, O’Leary did not fully close the door on Starlink.

“If Starlink wants to fit the flights, fit our aircraft, and pay for the fuel drag, we’d happily put them on board,” he said. “But the only way we see Starlink working on board our aircraft on short-haul flights is if you give it away for free.”

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