Look, if there’s one thing you should know about Elon Musk, it’s that the bloke cannot handle being told no. And if there’s one thing you should know about Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, it’s that the man has been professionally taking the piss since before Twitter was even invented.
So when O’Leary rejected Musk’s Starlink WiFi for Ryanair planes—citing the fairly reasonable concern that bolting satellite dishes to aircraft would cost them $250 million a year in fuel and installation—Musk did what Musk does. He had a tantrum.
O’Leary went on Irish radio and called Musk “an idiot.” Not particularly creative, but factual enough. Musk, clearly wounded, fired back on X calling O’Leary an “utter idiot” and an “imbecile.” Then, because subtlety has never been his strong suit, he floated buying Ryanair entirely and “putting someone whose actual name is Ryan in charge.”
He even ran a poll. 76.5% of his followers said yes, do it. Which tells you everything you need to know about the quality of discourse on that platform.
Here’s the thing though—O’Leary didn’t panic. The mad bastard didn’t even flinch. Instead, Ryanair’s social media team launched a “Big Idiot Seat Sale” offering 100,000 seats at €16.99, posting “Buy now before Musk gets one!!!”
At a press conference in Dublin, O’Leary was asked about the feud. His response? “I suspect he’s a bigger idiot than me, but nevertheless, he probably thinks I am a bigger idiot than him.”
When pressed about Musk’s takeover threat, O’Leary pointed out that non-European citizens can’t actually own a majority stake in EU airlines. But if Musk wanted to invest? “It would be a significantly better investment than the financial returns he’s earning on X.”
Bookings went up 3% during the spat. Ryanair turned a billionaire meltdown into a marketing campaign. O’Leary got free press and came out looking like the reasonable one—which, if you’ve ever flown Ryanair, you’ll know is genuinely impressive.
The Irish don’t lose slagging matches. They wrote the bloody rulebook.
Source: CBS News
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