Topline<\/p>\n
Elon Musk publicly inquired about buying low-cost Irish airline Ryanair on Monday afternoon in a series of posts on X, his latest<\/a> suggestion he may consider buying the struggling company. <\/p>\n A Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 from Ryanair is landing at Barcelona Airport in Barcelona, Spain, on February 23, 2024. (Photo by Urbanandsport\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/p>\n NurPhoto via Getty ImagesKey Facts<\/p>\n Musk responded<\/a> to a witty X post from the airline appearing to oppose adding Wi-Fi on planes, asking Ryanair, \u201cHow much would it cost to buy you?\u201d and then adding, \u201cI really want to put a Ryan in charge of Ryan Air. It is your destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n Moments later, he pinned a poll<\/a> on his X profile asking users whether he should buy the company.<\/p>\n As of shortly before 3:30 p.m. EST, the poll had just over 300,000 votes, with 79% of users responding affirmatively.<\/p>\n Musk sells on-air WiFi services through SpaceX\u2019s Starlink satellites.<\/p>\n Ryanair Holdings plc is a public company, meaning Musk would need to stage a hostile takeover or make an acquisition offer to shareholders to gain control. <\/p>\n Chief Critic <\/p>\n \u201cI would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk, he\u2019s an idiot,\u201d said Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary in a podcast<\/a> late last week, sparking Musk\u2019s rage. \u201cVery wealthy, but he\u2019s still an idiot.\u201d<\/p>\n Big Number <\/p>\n $200 million-$250 million per year. That\u2019s the annual cost of installing an aerial antenna needed to access Starlink satellites on top of an aircraft, according to O’Leary, who described Musk\u2019s services as unaffordable. <\/p>\n Key Background<\/p>\n In a podcast clip<\/a> posted Thursday, O’Leary rejected the idea of installing SpaceX\u2019s Starlink satellite internet service on Ryanair aircraft, saying Elon Musk knows \u201czero\u201d about flights and drag. The next day, Musk publicly responded to the clip by calling O’Leary \u201can utter idiot,\u201d adding, \u201cFire him.\u201d That prompted a user to suggest he buy Ryanair and fire O’Leary, sparking Musk\u2019s interest, who responded with \u201cGood idea.\u201d Shortly after X suffered a sitewide outage on Friday, Ryanair\u2019s account, which is known for its witty posts, poked fun at Musk, asking<\/a>, \u201cPerhaps you need Wi-Fi.\u201d That\u2019s when Musk hit back by suggesting that he might try to buy Ryanair and put a person named Ryan in charge, garnering 9.5 million impressions as of Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Topline Elon Musk publicly inquired about buying low-cost Irish airline Ryanair on Monday afternoon in a series of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,605,61,60,24545,1899],"class_list":{"0":"post-253334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-elon-musk","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-musk","13":"tag-ryanair"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}