Starlink’s Musk vs Ryanair’s O’Leary: Guess who’s come out on top...

It’s almost too precious. In the red corner, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. In the blue corner, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, a former frontrunner for the title of world’s most obnoxious businessman until Donald Trump took the White House and Musk decided to buy X and become a MAGA troll.

When it was still broadcasting and culturally relevant, MTV had a stop-motion animated show called Celebrity Deathmatch in which a pair of household names rendered in plasticine would engage in gore-spattered combat in a wrestling ring. Can you think of a better pair to kick off a reboot?

Their beef? O’Leary pooh-poohed the idea of following Lufthansa and British Airways and installing Musk’s Starlink satellite internet technology into the 650-strong Ryanair fleet of planes.

Attaching the necessary antennae to the jets would, O’Leary maintained, add as much as $250m (£187m) to its fuel costs because of the aerodynamic drag.

Musk claimed this was misinformed, prompting a tit-for-tat exchange in which each called the other an idiot and worse. Let’s get it on, as Deathmatch referee Mills Lane (an actual boxing referee who voiced his own clay character in the show’s first run) would growl.

The Tesla boss even suggested that he buy the airline and install a “Ryan” as boss. He was trolling, of course. For a start, such a move would require him to have an EU passport. The bloc’s airlines have to be majority-owned by either EU nationals or those from Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein.

But wait, just how hard would it be for Musk to secure the necessary documents if he were so minded? A relatively modest investment in Malta (by Musk’s standards) would do the trick, and fairly quickly. Under the island nation’s Citizenship Act, a relevant minister can “grant citizenship by naturalisation to exceptional individuals whose achievements or service advance Malta’s national interest and long-term vision”. That includes “technologists and entrepreneurs”. Ding, ding, ding.

Does Musk really want to be running an airline on top of Tesla, SpaceX, X and everything else? He might have to reduce his time spent posting online if he took the job, and then what would be the point of owning your own algorithm?

However, you might think that Musk would be a little more careful about suggesting takeovers, given how much trouble he has got himself into in the past.

Musk was forced to make good on his pledges in the case of X, when it was still Twitter, by a Delaware court after trying to back out of a bid. His $44bn buyout initially looked like a disaster for him, but X was valued at that cost in March 2025. Musk is every bit as good at business as he is at trolling. Don’t let us forget that amid all the sound and fury.

But it’s still all a bit sad, isn’t it? What you have here is a pair of shameless, uber-rich people who are unaccustomed to being told no. Most CEOs have to grapple with non-executive directors, shareholders and powerful analysts but Musk and O’Leary are basically untouchable. Look around you. This is a problem for the world.

However, while Musk clearly has the advantage over O’Leary in terms of money – he’s a Goliath to the latter’s David, which is not a role O’Leary is accustomed to – the Ryanair boss wins with the blarney. Watch his press conference, then tell me that the Tesla boss hasn’t met his match.

Witness O’Leary referring to Musk calling him “a r******d t**t: “He’d have to join a very long queue of people who think I’m a r******d t**t. Including my four teenage children.”

He went on to swat aside criticism of the spat from people like me, hailing the free publicity it has delivered to Ryanair, which launched a “big idiot seat” on the back of it. That naturally included delivering a free ticket to the X office in Ireland for Musk as a thank you, “for the wonderful boost in publicity”.

“I take no insult (from what Musk has said) at all. You’re frequently called an idiot or t**t at home, as anyone with children knows,” O’Leary continued, warming to the theme.

Making a man who once told my fellow columnist how he couldn’t wait to charge passengers for breathing air seem almost sympathetic is quite an achievement on Musk’s part. He’s got me rooting for the boss of Ryanair. I’m having to pinch myself as I write this.

So if I were Musk, I might be inclined to retreat. Not only does O’Leary – who also urged Musk to invest in Ryanair – have the greater wit, he looks set to reap the greater financial reward, too. Spats like this are ten a penny on X. But it’s proving a goldmine for the airline.

It also provided O’Leary with a free platform to call for Europe to ban the anonymity which helps drive revenues and many accounts on social media. I doubt O’Leary is any more popular than Musk in Brussels, given the way he carries on. But it is nonetheless just possible someone picks up that idea and runs with it amid all the transatlantic head-butting we are currently witnessing.