When Michael O’Leary and Elon Musk traded “idiot” insults, a predictable spectacle followed: Musk polls his 232 million X followers on whether he should buy Ryanair, O’Leary launches a “Great Idiots” seat sale from €16.99, and the story spreads across every newsfeed.
Ryanair’s share price was unmoved, but the scrap reveals the company’s enduring strengths. First, its unrivalled knack of attracting free publicity, preferably at someone else’s expense.
Website traffic rose 8 per cent and bookings by 2-3 per cent, boasted O’Leary.
Second, Ryanair’s almost obsessive attention to costs remains intact. O’Leary noted that Ryanair installing wifi via Starlink – Musk’s satellite internet service – could cost up to $250 million a year in fuel and drag.
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Ryanair’s customers would like free wifi, O’Leary said, but not so much that they would pay for it on a one-hour flight.
O’Leary knows his market and his customers. Long-haul airlines may voluntarily absorb Starlink’s cost because their passengers value the service, but Ryanair thrives on ultra low-cost discipline. O’Leary is probably right in viewing in-flight wifi as a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.
It is an obvious contrast with Musk, who has shown rather less feel for his own customer base, having spent the past few years enthusiastically alienating the green-liberal audience that once made Tesla fashionable.
The latest row did him no favours either, Musk again reaching for the kind of childish, offensive language that has turned off so many potential Tesla customers.
O’Leary knows how to pick a row that pays; Musk, not so much.
