Musk shared in X an idea to buy Ryanair. The low-coster announced a "sale for idiots"

Elon Musk, the world's richest businessman, asked subscribers on his social network X whether he should buy the European budget airline Ryanair. This was the result of his public conflict with the head of the low-cost carrier Michael O'Leary, during which they called each other idiots. The reason for this was Ryanair's refusal of satellite internet service Starlink, which is provided by Musk's space company SpaceX.

Elon Musk created a poll on his X page with the title: "Buy Ryan Air and reinstate Ryan as the rightful ruler". At the time of publishing this text, the positive "F Yes" answer option was gaining 76.5% and the negative answer was 23.5%. Which "Ryan" Musk was referring to exactly, the post does not specify. Irish billionaire Tony Ryan, who co-founded the airline in 1984, died in 2007, The Guardian noted.

Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary has decided to hold a press conference on Musk's "Twitter hysteria" in Dublin on Wednesday, January 21, Ryanair said.

"Musk knows even less about owning airlines than he understands about aircraft aerodynamics," said MOL [Michael O'Leary]. Perhaps Musk needs a break? Ryanair is launching a "Great Idiot Sale" specifically for Elon and any other idiots in X. 100,000 seats for just €16.99 one way. Buy now before Elon takes over!!!," the airline said in a statement.

Ryanair shares on the Dublin exchange on January 20 fell by 1.2%, but American depositary receipts on Nasdaq in New York, on the contrary, rose by about 1.5%. The papers have not changed in price too much since the beginning of the conflict between the company's management and Musk: this suggests that investors do not expect any real action on the part of the billionaire, says the Financial Times.

The airline has a market capitalization of about $35 billion. Musk's fortune is now estimated at $768.7 billion, according to the Forbes Real-Time ranking, which is updated in real time based on quotes.

Musk's questioning of X was a development of a conflict that began after O'Leary rejected the idea of adding Starlink satellite internet to the airline's planes, says the Financial Times. The head of Ryanair said that just by worsening the aerodynamic properties of the planes and increasing fuel consumption, it would result in losses of $250 million a year, and doubted the need for the Internet on the predominantly short flights that the airline operates. In the same interview, O'Leary called Musk "a very rich idiot."

Musk has written to X several times in the past week about the idea of buying Ryanair and firing its CEO, whom he also called an idiot, the FT reports. O'Leary, in a comment to the newspaper, advised Musk to "spend less time undressing women and children in X", alluding to the artificial intelligence feature Grok, which allowed users to use it to alter images and remove clothing from them, the publication explained.

Musk is an active user of X, which was formerly called Twitter. The billionaire publicly joked about buying the social network and then actually purchased it for $44 billion.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor