Ryanair’s famously feisty CEO Michael O’Leary, and SpaceX’s controversial Elon Musk have exchanged insults after the European budget airline’s leader said he would not buy into SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to equip his planes with Wi-Fi.
O’Leary has said Ryanair would not fit the Starlink system because its fleet would suffer a “two percent fuel penalty” because of the extra weight and drag that would ensue if the hardware for Starlink Wi-Fi were fitted to the aircraft. The system requires installing an antenna and radome on the plane’s body, increasing its weight and reducing aerodynamic efficiency.
Starlink has denied that the cost is as much as two percent, a figure that Michael Nicolls, VP of Starlink Engineering, has said refers to its older aircraft Wi-Fi terminals. Nicolls has highlighted company data showing a fuel penalty of 0.3% or less, for a Boeing 737-800 using the newer lightweight design.
Accused by Musk of being misinformed, O’Leary dismissed Starlink again on Irish radio broadcaster Newstalk, telling listeners Musk is “an idiot — very wealthy, but still an idiot.” He added that Musk’s social media platform X is a “cesspit.”
The two then traded more blows, with Musk calling O’Leary “an utter idiot” and demanding the airline “Fire him.” He went on to insist O’Leary had made a “factor of 10” error on Starlink’s fuel-burn impact and repeated: “Fire this imbecile.”
But shortly after Musk’s retorts, a technical problem caused an outage on the billionaire’s X platform, prompting Ryanair to make fun of X, replying: “perhaps you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?”
Although a 2025 Cornell University research paper shows Starlink is one of the world’s best on-the-move Wi-Fi providers, achieving more than 200 Mbps, which is in-line with home performance, commenters on-line have questioned whether the European market for in-plane Wi-Fi is the same as that in the United States. Ryanair runs a notoriously tight operation, charging flyers auxiliary fees for “extras” to keep costs and ticket prices low. Unlike many airlines that offer free Wi-Fi using Starlink, it is likely O’Leary would have wanted to make users pay.
