Tech mogul Elon Musk and Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary continue to trade jibes over comments O’Leary made regarding Starlink. O’Leary has even welcomed Musk’s threats to buy a share in the low-cost carrier.
A subsidiary of Musk’s company SpaceX, Starlink provides high-speed WiFi through low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, which offer more universal connectivity than traditional broadband. Recent months have seen an increasing number of airlines strike deals with Starlink in a bid to bring top-of-the-range inflight WiFi to passengers.
However, O’Leary declared last week that it wasn’t an investment he was interested in, saying he did not think passengers would be willing to pay for the service on Ryanair’s short-haul network. The additional expense of installation and running flights equipped with the Starlink antenna were also cited as obstacles. O’Leary explained:
It would cost us about 200 to 250 million dollars a year, in other words about an extra dollar for every passenger we fly. We can’t afford those costs. Passengers won’t pay for internet usage.
In retaliation, Musk has made multiple posts on X, the social media network he owns. This has included calls to fire O’Leary, and he even asked his followers:
Should I buy Ryan Air [sic] and put someone whose actual name is Ryan in charge?
On 20 January, Musk went as far to declare that O’Leary ‘has no idea how airplanes even fly’. Ryanair responded through characteristically cheeky social media posts, saying they were launching a €16.99 ‘Great Idiots sale especially for Elon and any other idiots on ‘X’.’
At a press conference on 21 January, O’Leary said the spat had boosted Ryanair’s bookings by 2-3%, and even joked:
If he [Musk] wants to invest in Ryanair, we would think it’s a very good investment.
This is not the first time Elon Musk has publicly clashed with an airline over Starlink. As rumours circulated at the end of last year that American Airlines was considering partnering with rivals Amazon Leo, Musk posted on X:
American Airlines will lose a lot of customers if their connectivity solution fails [sic]
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