What started as a disagreement over in-flight Wi-Fi quickly escalated into an unexpected public clash between Elon Musk and Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, attracting widespread attention as the exchange escalated into takeover jokes and sharp jabs.
Elon Musk has recently found himself embroiled in several high-profile disputes, including a legal dispute with OpenAI over alleged ill-gotten gains and a more public clash with Ryanair over the latter’s refusal to install SpaceX’s Starlink internet in the low-cost airline’s fleet.
O’Leary previously called Musk an “idiot” on the radio show, adding that the Tesla owner is “very rich, but he’s still an idiot.”
Musk also didn’t hold back, calling him a “complete idiot” who should be fired. The finger-pointing didn’t stop there, as the two billionaires continued to trade controversial remarks.
The heated war of words continues…
Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) reported an outage on Friday, January 16, causing frustration among users. Many netizens complained that they could not post to microblogging sites or check their feeds on the platform. The breach was tracked by Downdetector, which showed a spike in complaints from various regions such as the United States, India.
Ryanair took a swipe at Elon Musk during the outage, mocking the tech billionaire with a post that said: “Maybe you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?
Elon Musk doubled down and said, “Should I buy Ryanair and put someone whose real name is Ryan in charge?” The heated exchange immediately went viral, triggering a wave of memes, jokes and speculative responses from X other users.
One person tagged Musk’s AI chatbot and asked: “@grok what is Ryanair’s market cap, how much would a hostile takeover cost?” Another followed up: “@grok who are Ryan’s top 5 fits for the job?”
X comments
Even users named Ryan started promoting their sarcastic ideas. One person, who identified himself as Ryan, wrote: “Make me CEO and I’ll give everyone a Ryan discount.”
Another person said he was willing to change his name to become CEO: “Buy it put me in charge, my name is Bryan and we’ll paint in front of Ryan B. And I’ll use grok to fix everything there and live tweet it on X.”
What started the fight?
The back-and-forth began after O’Leary ruled out installing Starlink Wi-Fi on Ryanair planes. “You have to put an antenna on the fuselage, it comes with a 2% fuel penalty because of weight and drag,” he told Reuters. “We don’t think our passengers are willing to pay for WiFi on an average 1-hour flight.”
Musk later said O’Leary was “misinformed” and warned that Ryanair would lose passengers to rival airlines that had already signed up for the service.
Read also | Elon Musk is demanding up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft
Elon Musk is the richest man in the world, with a current net worth of over $700 billion a while ago. His net worth surpassed the combined wealth of the other three tech billionaires on the list, including Google’s Larry Page, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.
Although O’Leary is due a $116 million bonus in 2028 for meeting performance goals, he still commands a fraction of Musk’s fortune.