"Called me a R******D T**T" | Ryanair Boss LAYS into Elon Musk after Twitter spat

The Starlink people believe that 90% of our passengers would happily pay for Wi-Fi access. Our experience sadly tells us we think less than 10% of our passengers pay for this access and therefore we can't afford to shoulder costs of between 150 or 250 million a year. If Starlink wants to fit our aircraft and pay for the fuel drag, we'd happily put them on board. But the only way we see Starlink working on board our aircraft on short-haul flights is if you give it away for free. And like most things in life, if you give it away for free, passengers will use it. If you want passengers to pay something modest like a euro, €2 or $3 on our average 1 hour 15 minute flights, we think less than 10% and that's even optimistic. Probably less than 5% of passengers will take this up. I thought that was a reasonably measured response to why we're not using Starlink. Elon Musk apparently took great umbrage and resorted to insulting me on X at the weekend, calling me an idiot. I think yesterday he also rounded on me and called me a retard. All I would say to Elon Musk is he would have to join the back of a very, very, very long queue of people who already think I'm a retard, including my four teenage children. But we do want to thank him. We've had I think over three or four million hits on this seat sale our IT team launched yesterday, which is the big idiot seat sale. There's 100,000 seats available for sale at just $16.99, which just goes to show that Europe leads the world in low, low airfares. There's no airfares like this in North America. And we're later on this morning going around to the X offices in Cumberland House to present or to give Elon Musk a free ticket. He doesn't even have to pay the 69, a free Ryanair ticket to thank him for the wonderful boost in publicity which has seen our bookings rise significantly. They're up about 2 or 3% in the last 5 days, which given our volumes is a very significant boost. So thank you to Mr. Musk. I take no insult at all at being called an idiot or a retard. As anybody with teenage children would know, you're frequently called an idiot and a retard at home. I don't need to go outside to be insulted. But he's wrong on the fuel drag. We noticed he was holding a poll about should he launch a bid for Ryanair. We're a publicly owned company. He's free to do so at any time. But non-European citizens cannot own a majority of European airlines. But if he wants to invest in Ryanair, we would think it's a very good investment. Certainly a significantly better investment than the financial returns he's earning on X. And we want to thank him sincerely for the additional publicity.

I mean, look, there would clearly be a demand for Wi-Fi on board our aircraft if it was free. You know, other airlines, mainly long-haul carriers like Lufthansa and others, are talking about installing Wi-Fi on board as a facility and giving it out for free. But their average fares, particularly on long-haul, are over €1,000. Our average fares are €4. And we cannot afford to pay that 150, 250 million cost to install Wi-Fi unless it could be paid for. We have had discussions with Starlink and other providers, Amazon and others. A lot of it has focused on, you know, how can we, is there a way we can jointly put this on board. We'll trial it for you. We give you a platform with 200 and 300 million passengers across Europe, but you pay for it. You sponsor it, or can we get joint sponsorship? Like, there's always ways of which you're looking at creative solutions that might overcome what is our fundamental issue with putting Wi-Fi on board, and that's cost. We don't believe passengers will pay for it. But it would certainly be a welcome addition if we can in some way finance it and put it on board our aircraft for free.

Yeah. And we've had many years of experience. You get on board our aircraft. Lots of people are there on one-hour flights, but they're on their laptop. They have Netflix and all this kind of stuff. We don't believe there's any significant demand on the basis that people would pay for it on a one-hour flight.