Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has suggested he could buy budget airline Ryanair, escalating a public war of words with the carrier’s outspoken chief executive, Michael O’Leary.
The clash began last week after O’Leary was asked whether Ryanair would follow airlines such as Lufthansa and British Airways in installing Musk’s Starlink satellite internet on its aircraft.
The Ryanair boss dismissed the idea, arguing that fitting Starlink antennas would create “2% fuel drag” and add between $200m and $250m to the airline’s annual fuel bill.
Musk fired back on his X platform, describing O’Leary’s claims as “misinformed,” triggering a tit-for-tat exchange in which both men traded insults. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO went as far as saying O’Leary should be fired.
On Friday, Musk took the feud a step further, asking his followers on X whether he should buy Europe’s largest airline, valued at about €30bn. “Should I buy Ryan Air and put someone whose actual name is Ryan in charge?” he wrote, later following up with a poll asking whether he should “restore Ryan as their rightful ruler.”
More than 75% of nearly 900,000 respondents voted in favour before the poll closed. Ryanair was co-founded in 1984 by Irish billionaire Tony Ryan, who died in 2007.
Ryanair’s official X account also joined the banter, mocking Musk during a recent X outage in the US by posting: “Perhaps you need Wi-Fi #elonmusk?” Musk replied: “How much would it cost to buy you?”
According to Foreign news outlet The Guardian on Tuesday, while the exchange has drawn widespread attention, investors appeared unimpressed. Ryanair shares closed nearly 1% lower on Tuesday, suggesting markets were not taking the takeover talk seriously.
Any potential acquisition would also face regulatory hurdles. Under EU rules, airlines based in the bloc must be majority-owned by EU nationals or citizens of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein, a complication for Musk, who was born in South Africa and is now a US citizen.
The row initially flared after O’Leary told Irish radio station Newstalk that he would ignore Musk’s views on aviation technology. “He’s an idiot. Very wealthy, but he’s still an idiot,” O’Leary said, adding that Musk knew “zero” about aircraft drag.
O’Leary also argued that passengers would not be willing to pay for in-flight internet. “If it’s free, they’ll use it. But they won’t pay one euro each,” he said, adding that he was “thankfully” too old to be on social media.
Tony Ryan, the Irish billionaire businessman who co-founded the budget airline in 1984, died in 2007.
