Ryanair Just Called Musk an Idiot—And His $36B Joke Buyout Exploded

It started with a blunt rejection and ended with a billionaire Twitter poll that added $36 billion to the punch line. Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary called Elon Musk an “idiot” on live television last week—his exact words: “He’s an idiot; very rich, but still an idiot.” Within hours, Musk fired back on X, branded the Irish CEO “a real idiot,” and asked 595,000-plus followers whether he should simply buy the airline. Seventy-eight percent voted “yes,” retail-trader memes rocketed, and for a brief moment the idea of Musk running Europe’s largest ultra-low-cost carrier felt almost plausible—until you remember EU ownership rules, Starlink drag coefficients, and the small matter of Ryanair’s entire market cap being less than five percent of Musk’s personal fortune.

Starlink Spat: The $250 Million Wi-Fi That Wasn’t

Ryanair’s public rejection of Musk’s satellite-internet system was never going to be polite. O’Leary told investors the carrier had run the numbers: bolting Starlink antennas onto 570-odd Boeing 737s would burn an extra €1 million per aircraft per year in jet-fuel penalties, thanks to the aerodynamic drag and weight. At roughly $250 million annually, that’s more than Ryanair spends on free seating and TikTok ads combined. “The technology is not there yet for carriers that count every kilogram,” O’Leary shrugged, effectively slamming the door on Musk’s sales pitch.

Musk, who’s used to airlines tripping over themselves to announce Starlink trials, replied with the digital equivalent of a middle finger: a poll asking if he should “fix” Ryanair himself. The army of Musk-stans swarmed, hashtags #BuyRyanair and #ElonAir trended worldwide, and the stock—already buoyant on summer bookings—caught a retail-trader tailwind. By Tuesday night more than 900,000 users had voted, and 76.5 percent were chanting “do it.” Never mind that Ryanair trades in Dublin and Frankfurt, or that EU law caps non-European ownership at 49 percent. When the Musk mob grabs a meme, details are merely turbulence.

Market Math: A $36B Pocket-Change Takeover?

Here’s the reality check. Ryanair’s current market cap hovers around €30 billion ($35–$36 billion). Musk, even after a down year for Tesla, is still worth well north of $200 billion on paper. He could technically afford to snap up every outstanding share before lunch and still have enough left over to restart his Hyperloop tunnel. But here’s the catch: EU aviation regulations require that European investors retain majority control. Musk, a South-African-born U.S. citizen, would need a consortium of EU partners to front more than half the equity—hardly the swift hostile swipe his fans envision.

O’Leary, always game for free publicity, leaned into the absurdity. “If Elon wants to buy non-controlling shares like anyone else, he’s welcome,” the CEO grinned on CNBC, practically daring Musk to park a few billion in Irish stock and watch it yo-yo with every tweet. Markets loved the banter: Ryanair shares popped another 2.3 percent in after-hours trading, proving once again that nothing juices a European airline like a billionaire flame war.

Fuel, Feathers, and the Fine Print

Behind the memes lies a genuine tech stalemate. Starlink’s flat-panel antennas have slimmed down, but for ultra-low-cost carriers even 4.5 kg of extra hardware per aircraft adds up to hundreds of thousands in annual fuel burn across a fleet. Ryanair’s entire business model is built on razor-thin margins: 25-minute turnarounds, single-type fleets, and charging passengers for everything short of the seatbelt. O’Leary argues that until satellite terminals weigh “about the same as an iPad and cost less than a cup of coffee,” passengers can live without TikTok at 37,000 feet.

Musk’s rebuttal is classic: Starlink will keep getting lighter and cheaper, and airlines that ignore it risk passenger revolt. But Ryanair isn’t Emirates or Delta; it shuttles stag parties from Stansted to Seville for €19.99. If the Wi-Fi can’t pay for itself with ancillary revenue, O’Leary isn’t interested—especially when Europe’s fragmented airspace already forces his planes into fuel-sucking holding patterns. In short, the economics aren’t personal; they’re just brutal.

Drag, Dollars, and the EU Rulebook

Let’s talk physics. A Starlink antenna pod adds roughly 80 kg to an airframe, plus the router, wiring, and cooling fans. On a Ryanair 737-800 that hops five legs a day, every extra kilogram costs about €100 in annual fuel. Do the multiplication and you’re already north of €8,000 per plane, before you factor in the aero-killing blister on the fuselage. Add the drag penalty at Mach 0.78 and the bill triples. O’Leary’s €1 million-per-ship estimate suddenly looks conservative; aerospace consultants I pinged last night say it could creep toward €1.3 million if jet-fuel prices spike back above $900 per metric ton.

And then there’s the 49 percent wall. EU regulation 1008/2008 insists that every Community air carrier must be “majority owned and effectively controlled” by EU nationals. Musk, naturalized U.S. citizen, doesn’t qualify. Even if he converted every X-follower into a special-purpose vehicle, the bloc’s regulators would still cap his voting rights. O’Leary knows this; he literally wrote the term sheet when Ryanair took a 29.8 % stake in Laudamotion in 2018 and structured it to avoid triggering Austrian control tests. Inviting Musk to buy “a few shares for fun” is CEO-speak for “it’s legally impossible, mate.”

Meme Stocks, Meet Meme Jets

Within 24 hours of Musk’s poll, Ryanair became the most-discussed ticker on Reddit’s WallStreetBets Europe, eclipsing even battered German banks. Trading volume on the London-listed ADRs spiked to 3.4 × their 30-day average—eye-popping for an airline that usually bores retail investors with 2 % dividend yields. Call-option sweeps at the €22 strike (expiring Friday) surged 1,800 %, according to market data. One user screen-named “DogeInTheSky” posted a gain porn screenshot claiming a 340 % flip on weekly calls; the post has 42 k up-votes and counting.

What’s wild is that none of the buying correlated with any material change in Ryanair’s fundamentals. O’Leary didn’t discover cheaper oil, Boeing didn’t magically deliver 737-10s faster, and EU passenger traffic guidance stayed flat. The rally was pure Muskian reflexivity: attention equals volume equals price. By Wednesday the ADRs had retraced 60 % of the pop, leaving late FOMO buyers holding plastic bags printed with shamrocks. If you bought the top, you’ve just paid a very expensive tuition in “priced-in jokes.”

The Real Loser: In-Flight Wi-Fi Start-ups

While two billionaires traded insults, a handful of smaller connectivity players got quietly flattened. Eutelsat OneWeb, Inmarsat’s European Aviation Network, and a half-dozen 5G air-to-ground hopefuls were courting Ryanair’s 200-million-passenger captive audience. Ryanair’s public dismissal of Starlink has now poisoned the well for all of them. If the most margin-obsessed airline on earth says satellite broadband is too heavy, investors suddenly question whether any retrofit model scales. Share prices of thinly traded ANA-backed antenna supplier Thinkom dipped 11 % on the Frankfurt Xetra exchange. Venture rounds for two unnamed air-to-ground 5G startups reportedly stalled this week as VCs recalibrate TAM slides.

O’Leary, never accused of altruism, may have torched the entire sector to save himself a fuel bill. The collateral damage is a frozen pipeline of next-gen connectivity that passengers were supposed to enjoy by 2026. Thanks, Elon.

Bottom line: This wasn’t a takeover bid; it was the world’s richest man live-streaming his bruised ego and dragging a public company along for the ride. EU rules make a buyout legally impossible, Starlink economics make it fiscally suicidal, and Ryanair’s DNA makes it allergic to anything that adds weight or cents to a ticket. The only thing that actually took off was retail-trader dopamine—and even that crashed back to earth once the votes were tallied.

So file this one under “great Twitter theatre, terrible investment thesis.” O’Leary keeps his airline, Musk keeps his satellites, and the rest of us keep refreshing X for the next billionaire beef. Popcorn still complimentary—until Ryanair starts charging for that too.