{"id":421186,"date":"2026-01-21T17:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T17:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/421186\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T17:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T17:21:14","slug":"ryanair-ceo-dismisses-elon-musks-idea-of-buying-the-airline-as-verbal-feud-escalates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/421186\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryanair CEO dismisses Elon Musk’s idea of buying the airline as verbal feud escalates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

LONDON (AP) \u2014 The CEO of Ryanair on Wednesday dismissed Elon Musk’s idea of buying the budget airline and shrugged off insults from the billionaire, in a war of words that erupted over installing Starlink<\/a> systems on aircraft.<\/p>\n

The spat between one of the world’s richest individuals and one of Europe’s most outspoken corporate bosses has been escalating for days. O’Leary said last week that the airline had ruled out putting Musk’s Starlink satellite Wi-Fi on Ryanair<\/a> planes because the extra fuel drag from the system’s antennas would be too costly.<\/p>\n

Responding to Musk’s accusations that he was \u201cmisinformed,\u201d O’Leary told an Irish radio station that “I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk, he’s an idiot.”<\/p>\n

Musk fired back on his social media platform X, calling O’Leary an \u201cutter idiot\u201d and an \u201cimbecile.\u201d He posted, \u201cShould I buy Ryan Air and put someone whose actual name is Ryan in charge?\u201d and polled his followers on the idea of buying the airline, with 76.5% responding yes.<\/p>\n

O’Leary told reporters in Dublin, where Ryanair is based, that non-European citizens can’t own a majority stake in a European airlines. Musk was born in South Africa and lives in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if he wants to invest in Ryanair, we would think it\u2019s a very good investment. Certainly a significantly better investment than the financial returns he\u2019s earning on X,\u201d O’Leary said.<\/p>\n

Musk purchased X in 2022 for $44 billion after clashing with top executives at the platform previously known as Twitter.<\/p>\n

O’Leary, who’s known for trolling critics, thanked Musk for \u201cadditional publicity.” The airline has taken advantage of the spat to launch a seat sale with promotional material featuring a caricature of Musk.<\/p>\n

He brushed off the billionaire’s insults.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I would say to Elon Musk is he would have to join the back of a very, very, very, very long queue of people\u201d who have already insulted him, \u201cincluding my four teenage children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

O’Leary said Ryanair had been in discussions with Starlink for about 12 months on installing the system,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like the Starlink system. It is a terrific system. It works very well,\u201d he said, but adding it would cost the company about $250 million a year. That includes the cost of installing two antennas onto each aircraft fuselage, plus an extra 2% of aerodynamic drag that would increase the fuel bill by $200 million.<\/p>\n

Ryanair would have to charge for Starlink but O’Leary estimated that less than 5% of passengers would want to spend a few extra euros for the service on its short-haul flights, which average about one hour and 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

The airline is still in talks with other telecommunications providers, including Amazon, which is launching its Starlink rival Kuiper<\/a>, to provide onboard internet service, “but only in a way where it will lower our costs,” O’Leary said.<\/p>\n

He also addressed a recent controversy around Musk’s AI chatbot Grok<\/a>, which is available through X and was being used to generate nonconsensual deepfake images.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial media, X in particular is, a cesspit,\u201d O’Leary said. \u201cThe most recent controversy with, you know, undressing children or undressing women is frankly offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 The CEO of Ryanair on Wednesday dismissed Elon Musk’s idea of buying the budget airline…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[201122,28,11,201123,34807],"class_list":["post-421186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-budget-airline","tag-business","tag-elon-musk","tag-o39leary","tag-ryanair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}