A dispute over in-flight Wi-Fi has turned into a public war of words between tech billionaire Elon Musk and Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary. The budget airline ruled out installing Starlink internet on its aircraft, which kicked off the back-and-forth.
Elon Musk called out by Ryanair CEO
The row began when O’Leary said Ryanair would not equip its fleet with Starlink Wi-Fi, citing concerns that the hardware would impose a fuel penalty. He argued that installing the required antenna and radome would add weight and drag, leading to roughly a “two percent fuel penalty” for each aircraft (via Travel Tomorrow).
That estimate was swiftly challenged by Starlink executives, who said the figure applied to older systems. Starlink’s vice president of engineering said newer lightweight terminals reduce the fuel impact to around 0.3% or less on a Boeing 737-800.
Musk publicly accused O’Leary of being misinformed. The Ryanair boss responded bluntly during an interview on Irish broadcaster Newstalk. He said he would ignore Musk entirely, especially since he advocated for Donald Trump. “He’s an idiot — very wealthy, but still an idiot,” O’Leary said, also branding Musk’s social media platform X a “cesspit.”
Musk fired back online, calling O’Leary “an utter idiot” and urging the airline to “Fire him.” In follow-up posts, Musk claimed the Ryanair CEO had made a “factor of 10” error in calculating Starlink’s fuel-burn impact. He then repeated his demand: “Fire this imbecile.” Ryanair’s official X account later joined the exchange, mocking Musk during a reported outage on the platform by replying: “perhaps you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?”
Ryanair operates more than 600 Boeing 737 aircraft and runs one of Europe’s most cost-focused airline models. O’Leary has said fitting Starlink across the fleet could cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually. This is a trade-off he believes makes little sense on short-haul routes where passengers may not pay extra for connectivity.
