The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO is engaged in a heated spat with Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary over minor insults hurled by two grown men in public forums. And it’s all about internet on short haul flights. Here’s what’s happening.
X reportedly still allows grok-produced, erotic images despite new ban
On January 14, Ryanair ruled out the possibility of installing Musk’s Starlink internet technology on its planes, like competitors British Airways and Lufthansa. “You need to put the antenna on the fuselage, it comes with a two percent fuel penalty because of the weight and drag. We don’t think our passengers are willing to pay for WiFi for an average one-hour flight,” O’Leary told Reuters.
The next day, Musk posted on his social platforms
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Since then, it has been But – and at progressively lower levels of maturity.
When the X suffered a major outage on January 16, Ryanair took a dig at Musk on stage, asking, “Maybe you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?” Musk fired back, tweeting, “Should I buy Ryan Air and put someone whose real name is Ryan in charge?”
Then, in a radio interview on Ireland’s Newstalk, O’Leary was asked about Ryanair’s stance on Starlink. The airline’s CEO again rejected the idea, not only describing the impact of adding antennas to aircraft – “about 2 percent fuel drag” and “an increased fuel bill of $200, $250 million a year… in other words, about an extra dollar for every passenger we fly” – but then taking aim at Musk directly.
mashable light speed
He said, “I frankly won’t pay attention to anything that Elon Musk puts down the drain called his ex.” “He was the guy who advocated getting Donald Trump elected. I wouldn’t pay any attention to Elon Musk. He’s an idiot. Very rich, but he’s still an idiot.”
Of course, Musk hit back on X, repeating the insult and calling for O’Leary to be fired — a message he’s been repeating on X ever since.
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Since then, there have been some oblique comments on social media – on January 19, Ryanair’s official Airline response: “”Wi-Fi on planes.”
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Now, it appears Musk is moving forward in his favorite strategy of controlling the narrative by buying into it. Musk responded to the above post by asking, “How much would it cost to buy you?” before calling for O’Leary to be fired after later using an R-word slur. Then, on January 19, Musk posted a poll for X, asking if they should “buy Ryan Air and restore Ryan as their rightful ruler.”
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On Tuesday, Ryanair moved things into even more immature territory than Musk (harder to do), with a post on And yes, O’Leary organized the conference at which Ryanair actually launched that sale.
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O’Leary thanked Musk for his “amazing increase in publicity, which has significantly increased our bookings,” and reiterated Musk’s (not great) insult about himself during his address.
“The people at Starlink believe that 90 percent of our passengers will happily pay for Wi-Fi access,” he said. “Our experience, sadly, tells us that we think less than 10 percent of our passengers will pay for this access, and so we cannot afford the cost of between £150 or £250 million per year. If Starlink wants to fit our aircraft and pay for the fuel drive, we will happily put them on the aircraft. But the only way we will see Starlink working on our aircraft on short-haul flights is if you make it Give it away for free.”
Credit: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/Bloomberg via Getty Images
As the BBC points out, Musk would have difficulty buying Ryanair, as the majority of EU-based airlines must be owned by people from the EU, Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland or Switzerland.
At this point, can Ryanair get back to emptying our wallets with huge baggage fees and Musk actually address the issue of constantly creating sexually explicit images despite being banned from doing so by Grok?
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