{"id":289216,"date":"2026-01-17T12:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T12:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/289216\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T12:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T12:36:09","slug":"musk-and-ryanairs-oleary-trade-insults-in-starlink-wi-fi-row-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/289216\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk and Ryanair\u2019s O\u2019Leary trade insults in Starlink Wi-Fi row \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Musk <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/elonmusk\/status\/2012149807192981801\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">fired back on X<\/a>, writing: \u201cRyanair CEO is an utter idiot. Fire him.\u201d In a follow-up post, he accused O\u2019Leary of getting Starlink\u2019s fuel-burn impact wrong \u201cby a factor of 10\u201d and added: \u201cFire this imbecile.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ryanair\u2019s official X account also joined the fray, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Ryanair\/status\/2012213546222833983\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">mocking Musk during a reported outage<\/a> on his platform, replying: \u201cperhaps you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Behind the insults lies a substantive dispute about costs and aircraft performance. Ryanair has publicly ruled out installing Starlink across its more than 600 Boeing 737s, arguing the external antennas would increase drag and fuel consumption. <\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Leary has said the technology would impose around a 2 percent fuel penalty and could cost the airline hundreds of millions of dollars a year, a trade-off he says makes little sense on short-haul flights where passengers are unlikely to pay for connectivity.<\/p>\n<p>Musk disputes those figures, pointing to airlines already flying with Starlink-equipped aircraft and arguing that fast internet will increasingly shape passenger choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Musk fired back on X, writing: \u201cRyanair CEO is an utter idiot. Fire him.\u201d In a follow-up post,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[3084,79,6931,18,1647,17920,19,47986,17,1109,144526,37216,6144,1114,82,1997],"class_list":{"0":"post-289216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-airlines","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-connectivity","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-elon-musk","13":"tag-fuels","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-internet-governance","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-media","18":"tag-michael-oleary-ryanair-ceo","19":"tag-platforms","20":"tag-satellites","21":"tag-social-media","22":"tag-technology","23":"tag-trade"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115910474675055442","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}