Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has thanked Elon Musk for all the additional publicity that their online spat has brought his airline, saying sales have risen two to three percent in the last five days.
Musk has suggested he could buy the budget airline and called O’Leary “insufferable” and “an idiot”, after O’Leary rejected the idea of using Musk’s Starlink technology to provide wifi on flights.
At a press conference on Wednesday, O’Leary said he takes “no insult” at Musk’s jibes, and that he is regularly insulted at home by his four teenage children and many others.
He also said Musk is “free” to invest in Ryanair shares, but under EU laws, Musk could not own a majority of a European airline.
Musk is the world’s richest man with an estimated net worth of $769bn (£573bn), and O’Leary runs Europe’s busiest airline. Both are known to court media attention with strong language and provocative statements.
O’Leary said at the press conference that his team is going to X’s office in Dublin to give Musk a free Ryanair ticket to thank him for the “wonderful boost” in publicity he’s had.
“If he wants to call me an idiot, he wouldn’t be the first, and he certainly won’t be the last … But if it helps to boost Ryanair sales, you could insult me all day, every day.”
The squabble between the two intensified after O’Leary called Musk an “idiot” and said using Starlink to provide Ryanair passengers with free wifi would not be cost-effective.
O’Leary added that the cost of installing Starlink would be €250m (£218m) to fit all necessary equipment — and would increase fuel costs by €100m (£87m) per year.
He said he thinks only 5% of Ryanair passengers would pay for wifi, so there would be poor return on investment.
On the prospect of Musk buying the Irish airline, O’Leary said: “We’re a publicly owned company. He’s free to [buy shares] at any time, but non-European citizens cannot own a majority of European airlines.”
“If he wants to invest in Ryanair, we would think it’s a very good investment.”
O’Leary called all social media “a cesspit”, but conceded it was important for Ryanair’s marketing.
The company is known to take an irreverent approach to social media, often mocking customers for complaining about the airline’s cost-cutting measures.
O’Leary said he’d had no direct contact with Elon Musk.
Musk has floated the idea of buying Ryanair several times on X in the past week, but EU-based airlines must be majority owned by people from the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein.
Last week, after German airline Lufthansa announced it would install Starlink on its planes to provide all passengers with free wi-fi, O’Leary said Musk knew “zero” about flight aerodynamics.
