Ryanair pushes the envelope attacking any onboard amenity as an enemy of cost, signaling they’ll go to any length to keep flying cheap. Their CEO Michael O’Leary has variously suggested making passengers stand, making tickets free and making money on inflight gambling instead, and charging customers to use the lavatory.
Their latest missive explains why they won’t put inflight wifi on planes, complaining that Starlink adds too much fuel burn to planes. Elon Musk clapped back.
“You need to put antenna on fuselage it comes with a 2% fuel penalty because of the weight and drag,” Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary told Reuters. “We don’t think our passengers are willing to pay for WiFi for an average 1-hour flight.”
Musk says O’Leary doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
He is being misinformed. I doubt they can even measure the difference in fuel use accurately, especially for a one hour flight, where the incremental drag is basically zero during the ascent phase due to high angle of attack.
And compared to most other connectivity solutions,…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2026
And Starlink’s Vice President of Engineering responds that the actual fuel penalty is 0.3%.
A 2% fuel impact might be true for legacy terminals, but @Starlink's terminal is much lower profile and more efficient. Our analysis shows that the fuel increase to a 737-800 (which burns 800 gallons/hour) with our current design is about 0.3%. Also beg to differ on whether… https://t.co/ZtHanpPT7P
— Michael Nicolls (@michaelnicollsx) January 14, 2026
In Europe it’s not just low-end leisure travelers flying ultra-low cost carriers. In many cases they simply operate routes that others do not. It’s why you find Prince William on Ryanair and the (then-) Prime Minister of the U.K. on easyJet. My only option to fly Venice – Nice this summer was Volotea.
Starlink is taking over inflight wifi. It’s simply a better solution for customers. It’s fast and always free for passengers, and it offers virtually no latency because of its low earth orbit satellites, there’s simply less distance for the signal to travel. It significantly outperforms ViaSat, which itself was better than earlier solutions.
O’Leary would respond that with such a short average flight time WiFi is not important.
For a one-hour flight, he’s probably right. And I’d be hard-pressed to do so as well.
If Starlink can get it done, so be it. I still think all airlines, even ULCCs, can and should provide free, reliable WiFi to all passengers on all flights. The tech is here. The cost is nominal. Sure, Elon is a character, and I’m not personally a fan. If Bezos can do it, cool. If a European company can, great. Just get it done.
O’Leary is a bottom feeder. The guy that wanted to charge people for taking care of biological needs while inflight. Musk might be a total a hole (as most tech people seem to be, at IME) but he’s not into ripping people off in such a manner.