Michael O’Leary says Elon Musk can insult him 'all day' if it boosts Ryanair sales

Ryanair chief says Starlink talks sparked row with Elon Musk but the fallout delivered billions of hits and boosted sales

The fundamental issue with putting WiFi on Ryanair aircraft is cost and the belief that passengers will not pay for it, the airline’s chief executive Michael O’Leary has said amid an ongoing feud with the billionaire owner of satellite internet firm SpaceX, Elon Musk.

Mr O’Leary said that the airline has been discussion with Starlink, the division of SpaceX that provides the satellite internet service, for about 12 months and it “works very well” but the problem is that when you put it on aircraft the costs soar to about €200m to €250m a year between installation costs and additional drag on the aircraft which costs fuel.

He said the company has been in talks with other internet providers as well, such as Amazon and Vodafone.

“We spend about €5.5bn on fuel and therefore it will increase our fuel bill by about €200m. Starlink believes that 90% of our passengers would happily pay for WiFi access, our experience sadly tells us we think less than 10% of our passengers will pay for this access.

“Therefore we can’t afford to shoulder costs of between €150m or €250m a year.” Mr O’Leary said he believed that this was a very measured response but Mr Musk resorted to insulting him on X calling him an idiot.

“I take no insult at all from being called an idiot or a twat,” he added.

Mr O’Leary did thank Mr Musk for the additional publicity that this feud has brought the airline over the last week. He added that the airline would send a free Ryanair ticket down to the X headquarters in Dublin for Mr Musk.

On Mr Musk’s suggestion that he buy Ryanair outright, Mr O’Leary said that Ryanair is a publicly owned company but “non-EU citizens cannot own a majority of a European airline”. However, if he wanted to invest in Ryanair, “we would think that it is a very good investment, certainly a significantly better investment than the financial returns he’s earning on X”.