Wizz Air, a bull in bearish times?

A Wizz Air A321, like the one that will be based in Belgrade. Picture: Wizz Air

The Eastern European low cost carrier is responding to the gloom that has set in the whole aviation industry by announcing a series of expansive moves.

No doubt, Wizz Air has also been affected by the pandemic (it cut its staff numbers by a fifth at the start of the pandemic and those that stayed had to accept wage cuts running in the double digits, between 14% for pilots and the 22% for senior executives), but it has also been one of the few (if not the only!) major airline acting rather bullishly in the face of the current difficulties.

In an environment where most airlines are retrenching and downsizing, Wizz Air has been announcing the opening of several new bases and adding routes throughout Europe, as well as pushing ahead with its Middle East plans…

Milan Malpensa (Italy), Larnaca (Cyprus) and Tirana (Albania), Lviv (Ukraine) and Bacau (Romania) will be see the opening of new bases.

Wizz Air will re-open also its Kyiv (Ukraine) base. This is a city where Wizz Air had even had its own local subsidiary a few years ago and where it had, nevertheless retained a presence.

Very interestingly, Saint Petersburg, Russia’s “Northern Capital” will also get a Wizz Air base. The operation will, for now, be of modest scale, 1 A320 aircraft and 5 routes. Russia, a country that Wizz Air is not a stranger to, but that so far it was covering from other European bases. Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport had been trying hard to get new operators. Russian low cost airline (and Aeroflot subsidiary) Pobeda launched some routes in 2019 to destinations in Western Europe (London among them) but it shortly after discontinued them. Apparently the issue was not so much the lack of demand as disagreements about operational aspects of the airport, such as turnaround times. It will be interesting to see whether this small toehold Wizz Air has in Russia manages to consolidate.

Also in the last few weeks, Wizz Air announced it is also expanding its network out of Bucharest (Romania), Chisinau (Moldova), Varna, on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, and Belgrade (Serbia). In the case of the Serbian capital, a new Airbus A321 aircraft will be added, which will allow the low cost airline to launch nine new destinations from the Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport.

And then there is the Abu Dhabi venture!

As we explained back in the day, the setup of a subsidiary (with a local partner) in the Gulf emirate opens up interesting perspectives for the low cost airline and comes at a time that couldn’t be more delicate for the incumbent carriers in the region. Their business model, highly dependent in long haul transfer traffic and deploying large capacity with wide-body aircraft, is certainly among the hardest hit by the pandemic. Is perhaps Wizz Air, with its narrow-body, no-frills model, the right formula for this environment?

Will see…in any case, Wizz Air seems undeterred by the circumstances and pushing ahead with its plans to launch Wizz Air Abu Dhabi. It has recently got the blessing of the local authorities and recognized as a national carrier of the UAE. The initial date launched, scheduled originally for June, has now been pushed back until after the summer. The initial batch of destinations will include Budapest, Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca (Romania), Katowice (Poland) and Sofia (Bulgaria).