Elon Musk lashed out at Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian on SNS, predicting he would lose his job after the airline chose Amazon's satellite internet service Leo over Musk's Starlink for in-flight connectivity.
The outburst appeared to reflect frustration over Delta's decision to go with a rival service.
According to Bloomberg and financial media outlet Investopedia, Musk took aim at Bastian on Thursday (local time) via X, formerly Twitter, writing, "He will lose his job for this."
The attack followed a post by aviation industry blogger JonNYC on X, who shared a tip claiming Bastian had explained Delta's decision to pass on Starlink at an internal company event and made negative remarks about Musk in the process.
According to the account, Bastian told attendees, "We don't want to be with Musk — trust me."
At a separate event, Bastian was also said to have indicated that while Delta had tested Starlink, he had no interest in doing business with Musk.
Bastian was further reported to have said, "If you know Musk's reputation, you know that everything said about him is true."
JonNYC, however, stressed that the account was secondhand and that the accuracy of the quotes could not be confirmed. Delta also declined to address the authenticity of the remarks.
Musk nonetheless pressed his attack on Delta and Bastian.
In a separate post on X, he mocked the airline, writing, "The best way to isolate AI from the outside world is to put it on a Delta flight — there will be zero chance of it accessing the internet."
Bastian had explained Delta's choice in a Bloomberg interview in May, saying Amazon offers a range of services beyond satellite technology and that Leo provides better bandwidth than Starlink at a significantly lower price.
Musk's SNS tirades draw rare restraint request
This is far from the first time Musk has drawn attention for his SNS outbursts.
In April, the judge overseeing Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI took the unusual step of asking both sides to limit their social media activity, according to Yonhap, which cited Reuters and other outlets at the time.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers made the request at the first hearing in the case after OpenAI's legal team raised concerns about Musk's mocking posts on X. "I don't think I've ever done this before," she said, before asking Musk to "restrain the habit of using social media to try to work things out outside the courtroom."
Musk had stirred controversy on Thursday (local time), the day jury selection began in the case, by posting mocking nicknames for OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman on X — referring to them as "Scam Altman" and "Greg Stockman (stock man)."
Musk subsequently agreed to minimize his social media activity, and Altman agreed to do the same.
yul@heraldcorp.com
