Elon Musk has hinted at the possibility of acquiring budget airline Ryanair following a call for the removal of its CEO, Michael O’Leary, amid a disagreement over the installation of Starlink. This potential move is the latest episode in the ongoing public spat between Musk and O’Leary, which initially ignited due to a clash over in-flight Wi-Fi services.

Both Musk and O’Leary have a reputation for their bold and often controversial statements. O’Leary, at the helm of the low-cost airline, is famous for his provocative remarks aimed at critics, politicians, and sometimes even his own customers.

In a burst of activity on social media platform X, Musk responded to an official Ryanair post, expressing his opinion that O’Leary should be dismissed from his role. Musk, known for his audacious business moves and social media presence, further engaged his massive following by conducting a poll. He queried his 232.5 million followers on whether he should “Buy Ryanair and restore Ryan as their rightful ruler.”

As the leaders of their respective industries, both Musk and O’Leary continue to captivate audiences with their public exchanges, each driven by their distinctive brands of leadership and communication.

And now, in a series of posts on X replying to an official post by the airline, Musk declared his belief that the Ryanair boss ‘needs to be fired’. 

The Tesla boss later drew up a poll where he asked his 232.5million followers whether he should ‘Buy Ryan Air and restore Ryan as their rightful ruler’. 

So far, the poll has received almost 900,000 responses, with 76.6 per cent responding that he should.

The online spat began on January 14 when O’Leary dismissed the idea of installing in-flight Wi-Fi across Ryanair’s fleet, expressing concerns over increased fuel consumption. 

His comments prompted an immediate response from Starlink, the satellite internet service owned by Musk.

Speaking to Reuters, O’Leary said fitting an antenna to the aircraft fuselage would add both weight and drag, resulting in what he described as a ‘two per cent fuel penalty’.

He added that Ryanair’s passengers would be unlikely to pay extra for Wi-Fi on short, one-hour flights.

‘I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk,’ O’Leary said on Newstalk, an Irish radio station. 

‘He’s an idiot. Very wealthy, but he’s still an idiot. What Elon Musk knows about flights and drag would be zero,’ he added. 

‘We have to put an aerial antenna on top of the aircraft. It would cost us about $200-250 million dollars a year, in other words, an extra dollar for every passenger we fly.

‘And the reality for us is we can’t afford those costs, passengers won’t pay for internet usage. 

‘If it’s free, they’ll use it, but they won’t pay €1 each to use the internet. So we’re not putting it on board.’ 

He then called X a ‘cesspit’. Musk responded to the video clip to say: ‘Ryanair CEO is an utter idiot. Fire him’.

The official Ryanair account replied to one post, asking, ‘What is a propaganda you’re not falling for?’, with ‘Wi-Fi on planes’, which led Musk to claim O’Leary needs to be fired.

Tensions rose further after a widespread outage on X left users in the US unable to load feeds or post content.

Ryanair’s social media team seized the moment to mock Musk, posting: ‘Perhaps you need Wi-Fi, @elonmusk?’

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 about £26.5billion – valuing the firm at £8billion less than the £34.5billion Musk paid for what was then called Twitter in 2022.

The low-cost airline is expecting to fly 207 million passengers over the current financial year.

Ryanair operates thousands of short- and medium-haul services across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and currently offers no on-board Wi-Fi to customers.

Starlink, developed by SpaceX, delivers high-speed internet through a vast network of low-Earth orbit satellites.

Ryanair has been approached for comment.

Another airline Emirates recently announced it was upgrading its entire fleet with ultra-fast Starlink Wi-Fi – making it the world’s largest international airline to offer the service across its network.

Passengers on select Emirates aircraft have been able since last November to stream, video call, game, work and browse social media in real time – free of charge – at 40,000ft with simple one-click access.

The first of Emirates’ 232 Boeing 777 aircraft equipped with Starlink internet was scheduled to enter commercial service, with plans to accelerate installations across the carrier’s fleet at 14 aircraft per month.