Tech billionaire Elon Musk and Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, are trading barbs in a growing public spat over Ryanair's refusal to install Musk's Starlink Wi-Fi on its fleet of more than 600 jets.
Their feud became public after O'Leary, speaking in a radio interview on Ireland's Newstalk, called Musk an "idiot" after the X and Tesla owner called O'Leary "misinformed" over the Starlink installations, reports Politico.
"He’s an idiot — very wealthy, but still an idiot," O'Leary said about Musk.
He also told listeners he would "pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk."
Musk responded in a post on X, calling O'Leary an "utter idiot" and calling on Ryanair to "fire him."
He followed up by accusing O'Leary of getting Starlink’s fuel-burn impact on Ryanair's jets incorrect "by a factor of 10," adding: "Fire this imbecile."
Ryanair, meanwhile, mocked Musk on X during an outage on the platform, replying that "Perhaps you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?"
Ryanair says that installing the external antennas needed to bring Starlink to its more than 600 Boeing 737 jets would increase drag and fuel consumption.
O'Leary said that the result would be a 2% fuel penalty, costing Ryanair hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which would not be offset on short flights whose passengers won't likely pay to connect to Wi-Fi.
Musk, though, pointed out that there are other airlines that already use Starlink and said that adding fast internet to Ryanair's jets will give passengers a choice.
Starlink Engineering Vice President Michael Nicolls has argued that the company's analysis points to no more than a 0.3% fuel penalty for Ryanair's planes, not the 2% cited by O'Leary, reports Simple Flying.
Nicholls conceded that O'Leary's figure was correct for older aircraft wi-fi terminals, but said that Starlink's newer design is drastically thinner, which slashes the aerodynamic penalty.
Many carriers offer Starlink free-of-charge for their passengers, but Ryanair had expected to add a paywall and charge extra fees for the service.
O'Leary said that passengers will use in-flight Wi-Fi if it's offered for free, but "won't pay one Euro each to use the internet," especially on shorter flights.
Several airlines worldwide do use Starlink, including the German carrier Lufthansa, which said recently it would add the service to its full fleet of around 850 aircraft.
Companies that have introduced or announced deals with Starlink include Qatar Airways, Alaska Airlines, airBaltic, and United Airlines.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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