Elon Musk jokes about buying Ryanair airline and replacing its CEO amid Starlink Wi-Fi row

What began as a disagreement over in-flight Wi-Fi has quickly spiralled into an an unexpected public showdown between Elon Musk and Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, drawing widespread attention as the exchange escalated into takeover jokes and pointed jabs.

Elon Musk has recently found himself entangled in several high-profile disputes, including a legal dispute with OpenAI over alleged wrongful gains and a more public clash with Ryanair over the latter's refusal to install SpaceX's Starlink internet into the low-budget airline's fleet.

Speaking on a radio show earlier, O’Leary referred to Musk as an “idiot.”, adding that the Tesla owner is “very wealthy, but he’s still an idiot.”

Musk also did not hold back and labeled him as an “utter idiot” who should be fired. The name-calling did not stop there, as both billionaires continued to trade controversial remarks.

Ryanair took a swipe at Elon Musk during the outage, mocking the tech billionaire on with the post that said: “Perhaps you need Wi-Fi, @elonmusk?”

Elon Musk doubled down, saying “Should I buy Ryanair and put someone whose actual name is Ryan in charge?” The heated exchange instantly went viral, triggering a wave of memes, jokes and speculative replies from other X users.

One person tagged Musk’s AI chatbot and asked, “@grok what’s Ryanair’s market cap, how much would it cost for a hostile takeover?” Another followed up with, “@grok who are the top 5 Ryan’s that would be suitable for this job?”

Even users named Ryan started pitching in their sarcastic ideas. One person identifying himself as Ryan, wrote, “Make me CEO and I’ll give all Ryan’s a discount.”

Another person said he is willing to change his name to become the CEO, “Buy it, put me in charge, my name is Bryan, and we'll paint B's in front of the Ryan. And I'll use grok to fix everything over there and live tweet all of it on X.”

Later, Musk said that O’Leary was “misinformed” and warned that Ryanair would lose passengers to rival airlines that have already signed up for the service.

Elon Musk is the richest man on the globe, with his current net worth exceeding $700 billion a while back. His net worth surpassed the combined wealth of the next three tech billionaires on the list, including Google's Larry Page, Oracle's Larry Ellison, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Though, O’Leary is set to receive a $116 million bonus in 2028 for meeting performance targets, he still commands a fraction of the wealth of Musk.