The feud between the world’s richest man and Europe’s largest discount airline is intensifying.
Ryanair, whose CEO has been engaged in a public back-and-forth with Elon Musk in recent days, announced on Tuesday that it was launching a “Great Idiots seat sale, especially for Elon and other idiots on X.”
The offering includes 100,000 one-way tickets for £16.99 for flights to Basel, Switzerland; Birmingham, United Kingdom; and Cologne, Germany.
“Buy one now before Musk gets one!!!!” the company posted in a press release.
It’s the latest headline-grabbing move in a feud that bubbled up last Wednesday. It started when Michael O’Leary, the CEO of the Ireland-based airline since 1994, told Reuters that he wasn’t interested in installing Starlink, the satellite internet service made by Musk’s SpaceX.
In an interview with Irish radio station Newstalk, O’Leary said the service required an antenna that would make his planes less aerodynamic. That would add around £200 million and £250 million in fuel costs. He said customers drawn to the no-frills airline would have to pay an extra £1 per ticket — and worried shoppers want to pay for the extra service.
Musk responded by generating a now-completed poll on X. It asked users if he should buy the company.
By the time the poll ended, the Tesla CEO’s Monday post had received nearly 900,000 votes, with three-quarters voting in favor of Musk purchasing the Ireland-based company.
The poll also said he would “restore Ryan as their rightful ruler” — Ryanair is named after one of its cofounders, Tony Ryan.
Today, O’Leary holds over 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) of stake in the company — but the CEO is perhaps best known for his outspoken, provocative style. That’s helped spark the high-powered barbs between the two billionaires.
Musk said O’Leary had the wrong numbers for the additional fuel costs due to the aerodynamic changes from installing a Starlink terminal.
O’Leary responded with a round of new insults.
“Very wealthy, but he’s still an idiot,” O’Leary said on Irish radio, adding that Musk has “zero” knowledge of running an airline.
Then, Musk said O’Leary was an “utter idiot,” called for his firing, and began talking about buying Ryanair.
Meanwhile, the airline’s social media team, known for its dry humor, has continued to prod Musk.
Responding to reports about a widespread X outage, the Ryanair account posted on Friday: “Perhaps you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?” And on Monday, it jested that in-flight WiFi was an example of propaganda it wasn’t falling for.
Musk then replied, “How much would it cost to buy you?” before beginning his poll.
This isn’t the first time that Musk has polled X users about his business ventures. Back in 2021, he ran a poll about selling 10% of his Tesla stock. More famously, he ran several about Twitter in 2022. That included 70% of 2 million voters saying Twitter did not “rigorously adhere” to free speech, and 4.4 million users voting on an edit button. Musk then bought the platform for $44 billion and later renamed it X.
Meanwhile, Ryanair has a market cap of nearly $36 billion — a fraction of Musk’s $681 billion net worth. This is not the first time Musk has quipped about buying the airline and installing an eponymous boss.
However, it’s highly unlikely he could acquire it.
Ireland is part of the European Union, whose laws require airlines to be majority-owned by EU nationals or member states.
Aviation is a highly regulated sector. The rules are even stricter in the US, which says foreign ownership cannot exceed 25%.
“Musk knows even less about airline ownership rules than he does about aircraft aerodynamics,” O’Leary wrote in Tuesday’s press release.
