Elon Musk Mulls Buying Ryanair and Putting “Someone Named Ryan” in Charge [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary and Elon Musk are feuding over whether Starlink materially increases fuel costs. So the richest man in the world muses about buying Ryanair and putting a guy named Ryan in charge.

  • JetBlue’s JSX partnership ends February 28. JetBlue owns – or owned – a stake in JSX. JSX is private and doesn’t disclose transactions, and it wasn’t material for JetBlue, so I don’t know the current status of that investment.

    United and Qatar Airways have also been publicly listed as investors, and United in some sense became closer – JSX credits were part of the Chase card portfolio refresh. And, of course, JetBlue and United are getting closer. So I wasn’t predicting this! But JetBlue does seem to be shedding partners.

  • Eek.

  • Scott Kirby thinks United should buy the Flighty app.

  • Making good use of airline food vouchers during delays (WaPo)

  • A claim that how efficiently you fill out a credit card application can contribute to approval/denial.

    if you copy-paste your SSN, address, or income, you are dead. normal people type this stuff out. churners and fraudsters use notepads.

    if you fill out a 3-page app in 45 seconds, you get flagged. bio-catch (big vendor for this) tracks “time on page.” real humans hesitate. they double-check the zip code. they scroll to read the disclosures (even if they don’t read them)

    mouse tracks: we track your mouse curve. if you move in straight lines from box to box, it looks like a script. humans move in curves and hover over random stuff.

    the “incognito” red flag: applying from a fresh incognito window or vpn makes you look like a fraudster, not a privacy advocate. they want to see a browser history (cookies) that shows you are a real person who shops at target, not a ghost.

    gyroscope data (mobile): if you apply on your phone and it’s perfectly flat on a table, you score higher risk. real people hold their phones, and hands shake slightly. perfectly flat = device farm.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. Apparently Airbus has some experience with tailstrikes, between January 2022 and September 2024 they had 49 tailstrike events reported. There must have been some issues even prior to 2022, as the Airbus “Safety First” magazine has published 3 articles on how to prevent them: “A Focus on the Landing Flare” article published September 2020, “A Focus on the Takeoff Rotation” published January 2021, and most recently “Preventing Tailstrike During Go-around Near the Ground” published October 24. Case Study #2 in the most recent article even shows a late flare, URL here: https://safetyfirst.airbus.com/preventing-tailstrike-during-go-around-near-the-ground/ There are a number of pilots following this blog, it would be interesting to hear their perspective.

  4. Starlink is pretty impressive; Teslas used to be the gold standard in personal electric vehicles; we still rely on Space-X for a lot within the private space industry. If Elon could focus on those strengths and not get so distracted with trolling, defunding social programs at home and abroad, or picking fights with airlines, man, that’d be swell.

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