Elon Musk Polls Followers: Should He Buy Ryanair?

Elon Musk has asked his followers on social media site X whether he should buy Ryanair, in the escalation of a dispute that began when Michael O’Leary ruled out adding Starlink internet to the airline’s planes. In the past week, the Tesla boss has several times posted on X about purchasing the airline so he could fire its chief executive. On Monday night, Mr Musk posted a poll titled “Buy Ryan Air and restore Ryan as their rightful ruler”, which was viewed 30 million times. Ryanair founder Tony Ryan died in 2007. Ryanair shares have moved little since the spat erupted last week and posted modest gains on Tuesday before falling back, suggesting investors do not expect the world’s richest person to take action. The airline has a market capitalisation of about $35 billion (€29.8 billion) and will be debt-free in the coming months. Under European Union (EU) rules, airlines based in the bloc must be majority-owned by nationals from within the area or Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein. Ryanair previously prevented non-EU nationals, including from the UK, from buying its shares following Brexit. Last year it lifted the restrictions after finding that more than half its shareholders came from the approved list – although non-nationals are still unable to vote their company shares. When Mr Musk bought Twitter, which he renamed X, in 2022, he was forced to raise much of the $44 billion against his own Tesla shares. The bizarre feud began when Mr O’Leary told Ireland’s Newstalk radio that Mr Musk knows “zero” about planes. Mr O’Leary said that buying internet from Musk’s Starlink would cost the airline $250 million a year by increasing the drag on its planes and burning more fuel, while its passengers would not want to pay for the service. He added: “What Elon Musk knows about flights and drag would be zero ... I frankly wouldn’t pay any attention to anything Elon Musk puts on that cesspit of his called X.” Mr Musk responded by calling O’Leary an “utter idiot” and saying he should be fired. One user suggested Mr Musk should buy the airline instead, to which Mr Musk responded by saying it was a good idea. Both sides have issued provocative statements since. When X suffered an outage in the US last week, Ryanair’s X account messaged suggesting it needed better wifi access. The airline, whose X feed is generally lighthearted, has also since tweeted that wifi on planes is propaganda. Both Mr Musk and Mr O’Leary are known for their provocative outbursts, in part to raise their own profiles without spending on advertising. Mr Musk, who was an avid user of Twitter, joked about buying the social media platform on the site before actually purchasing it. Ryanair declined to comment. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026