Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary on Tuesday launched a “Big Idiots” seat sale, targeting Elon Musk and his followers, after the Starlink boss attacked O’Leary for passing on a suggestion to install satellite internet service on his fleet of commercial aircraft.
In an X post on Tuesday, the Dublin-based airline said it was selling 100,000 seats for €16.99 and encouraged people to buy them “before Musk gets one.”
Their dispute took off last week after the billionaire called O’Leary a “complete idiot” for ignoring the suggestion, as well as an offer to buy the low-cost airline.
Musk suggested he could “put someone whose real name is Ryan in charge” and ran a poll on X to test the idea, with three-quarters of respondents supporting it.
O’Leary played down Musk’s insistence, telling reporters at a press conference in Dublin on Wednesday: “If you want to call me an idiot, you wouldn’t be the first, and you certainly won’t be the last… But if it helps boost Ryanair’s sales, you could insult me all day, every day,” he said. BBC reported.
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He went on to call social media “a cesspool” but admitted it was important for Ryanair’s marketing.
O’Leary said installing Wi-Fi on his planes through Musk’s Internet service would cost about $250 million a year, including additional fuel costs, but that he would welcome an investment.
“Ryanair would be open to investment from the world’s richest person, but a takeover is impossible under European Union rules that restrict ownership of foreign airlines,” he said.
Ryanair is also a publicly owned company, but Musk “is free to buy shares at any time,” O’Leary reflected.
EU-based airlines must also be majority owned by EU citizens, Swiss citizens, Norwegian citizens, Icelandic citizens or citizens of Liechtenstein, as provided in the European Parliament.
FILE – Elon Musk attends the Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in Washington.
Photo/Evan Vucci, Archive
“If you want to invest in Ryanair, we would think it’s a very good investment,” O’Leary said, adding that the returns would be better than those of Musk’s social media platform X. “Mr. Musk can buy shares, but he cannot take control,” he added.
O’Leary also confirmed that their public dispute, which he called Musk’s “Twitter tantrum,” had led to a spike in seat reservations.
“They’re up about two to three percent in the last five days, which, given our volumes, is a very significant boost,” he said. He later told a reporter that bookings for January to March, the final quarter of Ryanair’s financial year, were strong.
O’Leary said he had been in talks with Starlink for a year as he considered inflight Wi-Fi, but decided it was too expensive an investment.
He said Ryanair was looking for a supplier willing to fund the facility and the two sides were strongly at odds over how many passengers would use the service.
“The people at Starlink believe that nine percent of our passengers would happily pay for Wi-Fi access. Our experience, unfortunately, tells us that we believe that less than 10 percent of our passengers would pay for this access,” he said, adding that Musk knows “zero” about flying.
— With Reuters files
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