The evening before, Musk had taken to his social-media platform, X, to call the Ryanair CEO an “insufferable, special needs chimp.” In recent days, Musk has called for O’Leary to be fired and threatened to buy his airline and oust him.

Staring down the barrel of an escalating brawl with one of the world’s richest and most outspoken figures, many executives of a major public company might choose to defuse tensions. Ryanair’s O’Leary leaned into the spat, offering a lesson in how to monetize the online feud.

To be sure, with no business in the U.S., O’Leary has little to lose.

The fight started with a simple ‘no,’ Ryanair wouldn’t be installing Musk’s Starlink Wi-Fi service on its aircraft. The service was too expensive, O’Leary told a reporter, costing as much as $250 million a year when factoring the added fuel consumption caused by drag from the external antennas