BRUSSELS — After decades spent lambasting European politicians, Michael O’Leary is now targeting Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
In less than a week, the outspoken Ryanair boss slammed both the U.S. president and his on-again, off-again supporter Musk. The latter hit back on social media, launching a feud and threatening to buy the Irish airline just to fire O’Leary, a proposal the airline CEO called “Twitshit.”
Everyone involved is a seasoned infotainment warrior — they’ve all used outrageous attacks and language to further their financial and political goals. But this fight is putting O’Leary into a different league; his targets are a lot richer and more powerful than his normal punching bags of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, officials from Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium or UK Reform leader Nigel Farage.
After telling POLITICO that Trump was “a liar” and taking aim at the U.S. president’s foreign policy and tariffs he said were harming business, O’Learytold Irish radio that Musk was “an idiot” in response to the world’s richest man calling him “misinformed” about the cost of installing Starlink systems on its fleet.
Ryanair has publicly ruled out installing Starlink across its more than 600 Boeing 737s, arguing the external antennas would increase drag and fuel consumption.
O’Leary’s keenness to scrap with Trump and Musk contrasts sharply with the approach taken by most of his fellow CEOs, who often balk at crossing the powerful. But insulting politicians and rivals is part of O’Leary’s DNA. He’s also insulated from blowback because his airline doesn’t fly to the U.S.; because it’s one of Boeing’s largest customers; and because Ryanair is protected against a hostile Musk acquisition by EU rules mandating that airlines have to be majority-owned by EU shareholders.
The online scuffle escalated quickly, with Musk calling O’Leary “a retarded twat” and O’Leary telling Musk on Wednesday “to join the back of a very, very, very, very long queue of people who already think I’m a ‘retarded twat,’ including my four teenage children.”
The airline said it was “launching a Great Idiots seat sale especially for Elon and any other idiots.”
So far, Trump hasn’t responded to needling from O’Leary.
But the dissing contest is more than a casual brawl among tycoons. It reflects what O’Leary has been doing for a long time in Europe: offending anyone who crosses his path, getting public attention and selling more tickets.
After days of mutual insults between the flamboyant airline chief and his quasi-equivalent in the space industry with come-and-go ties to the White House, O’Leary offered Musk “a free ride air ticket, to thank him for the wonderful boost in publicity which has seen our bookings rise significantly.”
“They’re up about 2 or 3 percent in the last five days,” he added at a press conference in Dublin. The company’s shares were also up over 2 percent on Wednesday.
“O’Leary’s complaint about Starlink was an absolutely classic Michael O’Leary complaint: operationally driven, cost-based, almost certainly technically correct, quite probably an attempt to negotiate the price down by Musk,” said Andrew Charlton, managing director of the Aviation Advocacy consultancy.
O’Leary confirmed on Wednesday that he had been in talks for over a year with Starlink and its rivals Amazon and Vodafone to provide Wi-Fi on Ryanair planes at no extra cost to passengers.
This is just the latest cost-cutting crusade taken by the Irish businessman, who spent the first weeks of the new year threatening to slash flights to and from Belgium over a ticket tax increase of less than €10.
“He’s the Trump of aviation, the same kind of idiot,” said Toto Bongiorno, a former union leader from Belgium’s now-defunct flag carrier, Sabena.
“He’s the guy who once said he was going to allow standing seats on planes. He’s the one who said people would have to pay to use the [onboard] toilets at some point,” Bongiorno told the Belgian TV channel LN24. “He invented a different way of doing aviation.”
Cursing doesn’t cost
In a market previously dominated by flag carriers that offered larger seats and free luggage, drinks and snacks — but also charged higher prices and occasionally received state aid from governments — Ryanair and other low-cost European airlines, such as easyJet and Wizz Air, have gained market share thanks to cheaper airfares and minimal extras.
However, O’Leary built Ryanair not only by slashing costs at the expense of the passenger experience; he also harangued European leaders, demanding fewer rules and lower taxes.
Von der Leyen is often referred to as “Derlayed-Again” by Ryanair due to her alleged failure to guarantee the right of airlines to overfly countries affected by air traffic controller strikes.
After Ryanair was fined by Spain’s Minister for Consumer Affairs Pablo Bustinduy for unfair practices, O’Leary called him “a crazy Spanish communist minister” and showed a cardboard cutout of Bustinduy dressed as a clown and wearing an apron with the words “I raise prices.”
Now it’s Trump’s turn.
“If Trump threatens Europe with tariffs, Europe should respond in like measure and Trump will chicken out. He generally does,” O’Leary said on Wednesday.
