Elon Musk’s war of words with Ryanair, who is known for light-hearted trolling on social media, and its CEO Michael O’Leary continues after the airline launched a “big idiot” sale in his honour
Elon Musk has hinted once again that he could purchase European budget airline Ryanair after he traded a war of words with Ryanair and it’s CEO.
Musk has continued to joke, even running a poll if he should takeover Ryanair, as his latest post on X has asked someone if they have a “interest in running an airline” as there may be “a job opening soon”. The Tesla boss has been working up his followers into a frenzy on X over his potential plans to buy the airline and put someone called Ryan in charge for a laugh.
Users on X have been asking Musk to buy it and rename the airline X Air after Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary called the social media platform a “cesspit”. Some have even made mock-ups of X Air airplanes using Grok.
In a press conference today, O’Leary played Musk chances of taking over before saying he would welcome Musk’s investment in the company to Sky News. O’Leary said Ryanair will deliver a free ticket to X’s offices in Dublin to thank Musk for the “wonderful boost in publicity” due to their war of words.
The airline chief executive said Musk’s insults of him this week have boosted Ryanair bookings “significantly”.
“It is very good for our bookings and you know, we love these PR spats that drive bookings on Ryanair,” he said at a press conference in Dublin.
“I’m sure it does wonders for Elon Musk and his X, or whatever subscribers he has on X as well, to be fighting with somebody. But you know, as long as it doesn’t involve safety, and we’ve never compromised on safety, any of these spats are great for bookings and great for awareness all over Europe.
“They’re up about 2% or 3% in the last five days, which, given our volumes, is a very significant boost.”
He added: “We’re very happy to continue the controversy. I welcome the accusation that I’m a chimp, it’s somewhat unfair on the chimp community, but chimp, chump, as long as it increases Ryanair bookings through January, February and March, it’s all good fun and entertainment.”
His comments come after Ryanair launched a “big idiot” sale honour of Musk’s spat with the airline, which is well known for trolling on its social media accounts. But the man who wanted to ‘legalise comedy’ as people can’t take jokes, appears not to be laughing at the humour.
Musk has floated the idea of buying Ryanair as the tech billionaire’s spat with the boss of the budget airline escalates
The Tesla founder created a poll on the social media platform X, which he owns, asking his followers if he should buy Ryanair and “restore Ryan as their rightful ruler”.
It comes days after he previously made the suggestion amid a feud with the Irish airline over the use of WiFi on flights.
O’Leary said in an interview with Irish radio station Newstalk that he would “pay no attention whatsoever” to Mr Musk, labelling him an “idiot” after being asked about Starlink being introduced on planes.
Starlink is a satellite internet system developed by Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX.
O’Leary said it would be too costly as the aerial antenna would drag on the aircraft and “passengers wouldn’t pay for internet usage”.
Musk has since fired back at posts on Ryanair’s X account which mocked the tech mogul over the row.
While his own posts are widely taken to be provocative rather than serious bids, Musk’s takeover of X, formerly Twitter, began with a surprise offer to buy it after he built up a stake.
Ryanair is listed on the Euronext index in Dublin and its shares have a market capitalisation of around 30.4 billion euro (£26.5 billion).
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