Elon Musk calls Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary an "utter idiot" after he ...

Elon Musk-owned social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) suffered an outage on Friday, January 17, 2026 – marking its second service disruption in three days. Ryanair took a cheeky jab at the latest X's outage, sharing a post on X that read “perhaps you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?”.

The tech billionaire replied sharply to the post, sarcastically proposing to acquire the airline and appoint a "Ryan" as CEO, turning a tech glitch into a pun on the company's name. “Should I buy Ryan Air and put someone whose actual name is Ryan in charge?,” the Tesla CEO wrote.

War of words between Ryanair CEO and Elon Musk

The exchange went viral on the internet with over 4.4 million views so far. It comes amid a public spat between Elon Musk and Ryanair CEO after he publicly called Elon Musk “an idiot”.

In an interview on the radio show Newstalk, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary dismissed rumours of equipping its flights with Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service. O’Leary said, “I would pay no attention whatsoever to Elon Musk. He’s an idiot, very wealthy, but he’s still an idiot.

” Responding to O’Leary's comments, Elon Musk shared a post writing: "Ryanair CEO is an utter idiot. Fire him."

What Ryanair CEO said about rejecting Starlink on its flights

Replying to Musk’s comments, O’Leary said, “What Elon Musk knows about flights and drag would be zero.

We have to put an aerial antenna on top of the aircraft. It would cost us about $200-$250 million a year. In other words, an extra dollar for every passenger we fly. And the reality for us is we can’t afford those costs. Passengers won’t pay for internet or internet usage. If it’s free, they’ll use it. But they won’t pay one euro each to use the internet.

So, we’re not putting it on board. And I frankly wouldn’t pay any attention to anything that Elon Musk puts on that cesspit of his called X. He was the guy who advocated getting Donald Trump elected.”Explaining why he’s not on social media sites like X, O’Leary said: “No, I would not waste…I don’t have any social media accounts. Thankfully, I am too old to get involved in the cesspit that is social media.”