Wizz Air will add 2 A321s to their Luton (LTN) base bringing the total to 11 based aircraft.

New routes: Bergen, Thessaloniki, Turku, Porto, Catania, Oslo
Expanded frequencies: Chisinau, Tirana, Constanta, Athens, Larnaca, Suceava

With some 42% of seat capacity at LTN, Wizz Air will overtake Easyjet as the airport's largest operators.

Source: https://wizzair.com/en-gb/information-a ... -uk-base#/

Looking at the published schedules, Wizz Air will expand their late night "redeye" operation (which also explains how they secured the slots):

Departure from Luton:
Athens 22:40 (04:25 arrival)
Bucharest 21:55 (03:10 arrival)
Chisinau 00:05 (05:20 arrival)
Cluj-Napoca 20:45 (01:40 arrival)
Constanta 22:40 (04:05 arrival)
Debrecen 22:20 (01:55 arrival)
Kharkiv 22:40 (04:25 arrival)
Sibiu 20:45 (01:45 arrival)
Sofia 21:55 (02:55 arrival)
Suceava 22:40 (03:45 arrival)
Timisoara 21:55 (02:35 arrival)
Varna 21:15 (02:40 arrival)
Vilnius 21:40 (02:20 arrival)

Wow. Although, easyJet now have A321s arriving with 235 seats. So I suppose the potential is there for them to increase their own seat count over the next couple of years.

This is just awesome. Direct flight from the mental capital of the world, TURKU, to London! It’s about bloody time!

It's interesting how each airline has more or less taken over one airport: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

peterinlisbon wrote:

It's interesting how each airline has more or less taken over one airport: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

I think you can indeed nearly rename airports.

London Ryanair Airport (Stansted)
London Easyjet-Stobart Airport (Southend)
London Easyjet-BA (Gatwick)
London British Airways (Heathrow)
London Flybe Cityflyger (City)
London Wizz (Luton)

Let's fix it!

EZY is very large at LTN, so it's not really fair to say it is a W6 airport.

BA CF is also the dominant airline at LCY.

But still no W6 LTN-EIN to compete with FR STN-EIN. W6 recently got some extra slots at EIN, they could use those for flights to LTN.

Wow those "red-eye" flights are absolutely insane.

I know London has quite a few of those flights but mostly in summer for beach destinations in Greece or Cyprus. Are those new flights year-round? Landing in Ukraine or Moldova at 4 AM in the middle of the winter must be a nice experience

Carlos01 wrote:

This is just awesome. Direct flight from the mental capital of the world, TURKU, to London! It’s about bloody time!

What do you mean?

Regarding the dominant airline at LCY it's quite obvious that it's British Airways Cityflyer Express with 35 destinations plus the Sun Air franchise flight to Billund in contrast Flybe only fly to 9 destinations from LCY with one of those Aberdeen being flown via Newcastle.

Ryanair have always been the dominant airline at Stansted from day that they moved their operations over from Luton in 1992 superseding Air UK at Stansted that had just been taken over by KLM and renamed KLM UK with a dramatically reduced network from the airport.

British Airways is obviously the dominant airline at LHR and it always has been being the home carrier from the day's of BEA and BOAC.

British Airways was the dominant carrier at LGW after the merger with BCAL in 1988 but after 9/11 when the airline gradually closed down the hub at the airport and the sudden rise of easyJet obtaining every slot they could get their hands on guaranteed their dominant position at LGW although British Airways still holds 33% of the slots at the airport.

Even with the expansion of WIZZ at Luton I think that EasyJet still has more seats on offer from the airport than WIZZ.

Those flight times with WIZZ are absolutely horrendous who in their right mind wants to arrive at their destinations at those times, I have to say that it seems that the entire schedule out of Luton is hideous especially the departure times of the majority of inbound departures to Luton.

Wizz were clever to secure the off-peak inbounds (Morning and Evening waves), and then the Monarch slots which gave them the basis for their base. EasyJet have stagnated somewhat, despite their being headroom for growth as Wizz have shown - but I’m disappointed many of these routes are duplications rather than heading to new markets.

To be clear, neither Wizz nor easyJet dominate Luton in their ow right, only taken together can you say they are the majority.
BA don’t dominate LHR in the way LH are at FRA or AF do at CDG, or even EZY at Gatters.

SCQ83 wrote:

I know London has quite a few of those flights but mostly in summer for beach destinations in Greece or Cyprus. Are those new flights year-round? Landing in Ukraine or Moldova at 4 AM in the middle of the winter must be a nice experience

The overwhelming number of pax on those will be Ukrainians and Moldovans given they're driven by VFR traffic. So they'll be used to it.

Tonight, W6 has 8 depts from LTN arriving at their destination at at least 0055. They are used to it.

ATH has long had overnight flights. For example, Aegean offers LHR-ATH 2215-0340, connecting with its domestic network, while during the summer BA operates LHR-ATH 2050-0225 (1925-0105 at the moment). And of course BA operates LHR-DME 2135-0420.

One of the most 'exciting' is LGW-KBP: 0300-0820 with PS.

It's interesting how WizzAir has created a bit of an "empire" focusing on the expats market. Obviously since air travel is about transporting people from one place to another, all airlines aim to do so, but Wizz's network more evidently.

[email protected] wrote:

The overwhelming number of pax on those will be Ukrainians and Moldovans given they're driven by VFR traffic. So they'll be used to it.

Tonight, W6 has 8 depts from LTN arriving at their destination at at least 0055. They are used to it.

Yes I understand their business model. Still this will be at quite a larger scale year-round. Suceava is not Moscow or Athens.

I am more surprised some of those tiny airports have 24h (I imagine) operations.

More runways!

Carlos01 wrote:

This is just awesome. Direct flight from the mental capital of the world, TURKU, to London! It’s about bloody time!

What do you mean?

In US Jargon Mental=Insane FYSA.

Mental=Intellectual, isn't that Boston with the record number of University students?

Lightsaber

Metal, no n, I guess. Heavy metal music

I tried looking online but I couldn't find a link with the number of frequencies being added to these destinations. Does anyone know where I can find them?

Blerg wrote:

I tried looking online but I couldn't find a link with the number of frequencies being added to these destinations. Does anyone know where I can find them?

W6/W9 (because remember, all LTN Wizz aircraft are under the UK AOC I believe) are very fluid when it comes to frequency. For example, when the LUZ flight was flown under W6 it ran at seemingly random times of the day with a mix of A320s and A321s - it would vary almost week to week!

I think this is Wizz Air's strong point, they constantly adjust things here and there as needed. Maybe they'd upgauge to a 321, or shift times about a bit to suit. It's mostly small stuff but it seems to work.

Blerg wrote:

I tried looking online but I couldn't find a link with the number of frequencies being added to these destinations. Does anyone know where I can find them?

The frequencies are all here:
https://wizzair.com/en-gb/information-a ... -uk-base#/

Blerg wrote:

I tried looking online but I couldn't find a link with the number of frequencies being added to these destinations. Does anyone know where I can find them?

The link in the opening post has them all.

The low yield nature of UK -> Central Europe allows for what would be otherwise considered anti social flying hours.

Does Wizz get many self transits from FR and EZY? My wife was on a late running FR from LIS to HHN last week. Six pax were brought to the front of the aircraft so they could make their HHN - Lviv flight on Wizz. (I’ve trained her well to spot these things!)

Eindhoven wrote:

But still no W6 LTN-EIN to compete with FR STN-EIN. W6 recently got some extra slots at EIN, they could use those for flights to LTN.

You don't need be Einstein to understand that EINSTN is the smarter route

So how many aircrafts has Easyjet based in LTN then?

a350lover wrote:

So how many aircrafts has Easyjet based in LTN then?

A lot more, but Wizz Air do a huge amount of LTN flying with non-based aircraft.

a350lover wrote:

So how many aircrafts has Easyjet based in LTN then?

EasyJet have I believe 24 based aircraft at LTN for summer 2019.

Thank you for pointing me to the link, I didn't scroll all the way down to where the frequencies were.

Interesting that LCA will have more frequencies than Athens. I guess they are trying to capture some of the traffic leftover from Cobalt's demise. By the way, what are their destinations out of Luton with most frequencies?

Have a look here: https://www.london-luton.co.uk/corporat ... statistics

Not broken down by airline but easy to piece together from pax.

LTenEleven wrote:

A lot more, but Wizz Air do a huge amount of LTN flying with non-based aircraft.

Has W6 already passed Easyjet in number of pax? Or that is meant to happen with these 2 new A321 next summer?

peterinlisbon wrote:

It's interesting how each airline has more or less taken over one airport: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

BA is far bigger at LCY than Flybe...

Now (Today) in LTN Base Wizz have
4xA321 :
Wizz UK: G-WUKC, G-WUKG, G-WUKH
WIzz HU: HA-LXT

5x A320:
All A320 in LTN is WIzz UK: G-WUKA, WUKB, WUKD, WUKE, WUKF

(A321 G-WUKI had a few days ago , first fly in Airbus Hamburg )

In Production list Airbus now 2 Ceo and 2 Neo but all Wizz H,U, and one very late HA-LTB

First A321neo flight from base in Budapest in Q1/2019


Currently WIzz Air is waiting for delivery only A321. Ultimately, 78% of the fleet is to be A321

BestWestern wrote:

The low yield nature of UK -> Central Europe allows for what would be otherwise considered anti social flying hours.

It also helps a lot that all of those destinations in the OP's post (with the exception of Debrecen) are two hours ahead of London. So those flights are + 3 hours + 2 hours added = meaning a 3-4-5 AM arrival. That is very convenient for the very first wave of early morning departures at 6 AM. Basically the plane flies all night. There are not many other combinations from London that can work that well. That is the reason why Athens, Larnaca or Moscow also see similar schedules.

BestWestern wrote:

Does Wizz get many self transits from FR and EZY? My wife was on a late running FR from LIS to HHN last week. Six pax were brought to the front of the aircraft so they could make their HHN - Lviv flight on Wizz. (I’ve trained her well to spot these things!)

Portugal has a large Ukrainian community. I suspect buying a Lisbon-Lviv (Lufthansa? Turkish?) on a legacy must be quite expensive. On the other hand LIS-HHN and HHN-LWO in early December seem like good candidates for 10 or 20 euro low-cost fares.

robbo2k wrote:

Currently WIzz Air is waiting for delivery only A321. Ultimately, 78% of the fleet is to be A321

Wizz Air will also be taking A320NEOs.

A320neo is to be after 2022, but wizz has the conversion option on A321.
Probably in the fight with Ryanair for a low CASM, they will prefer A321 with 239 places.

lightsaber wrote:

More runways!

Carlos01 wrote:

This is just awesome. Direct flight from the mental capital of the world, TURKU, to London! It’s about bloody time!

What do you mean?

In US Jargon Mental=Insane FYSA.

Mental=Intellectual, isn't that Boston with the record number of University students?

Lightsaber

Ok, I did not mean anything related to mental problems. I didn't want to use the word "spiritual" either, because I don't imply anything religious with it. This one is very hard to translate. Apparently. It's just that Turku happens to be the best place in the world, kind of like the alpha and the omega. Where everything begins and ends. The city of absolute good. But I'll settle with the heavy metal capital.

One way or the other - it's great to have more connections. The airport is the most convenient for passengers that I've ever seen.

destere wrote:

peterinlisbon wrote:

It's interesting how each airline has more or less taken over one airport: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

BA is far bigger at LCY than Flybe...

As I've already pointed out and clearly remarked upon in my post earlier in this thread!

BACF 35 destinations
Flybe 9 destinations

Carlos01 wrote:

lightsaber wrote:

More runways!

Carlos01 wrote:

This is just awesome. Direct flight from the mental capital of the world, TURKU, to London! It’s about bloody time!

What do you mean?

In US Jargon Mental=Insane FYSA.

Mental=Intellectual, isn't that Boston with the record number of University students?

Lightsaber

Ok, I did not mean anything related to mental problems. I didn't want to use the word "spiritual" either, because I don't imply anything religious with it. This one is very hard to translate. Apparently. It's just that Turku happens to be the best place in the world, kind of like the alpha and the omega. Where everything begins and ends. The city of absolute good. But I'll settle with the heavy metal capital.

One way or the other - it's great to have more connections. The airport is the most convenient for passengers that I've ever seen.

Two comments that you have quoted that I don't fully understand which are,

Turku happens to be the best place in the world?

And

The airport is the most convenient for passengers I've ever seen?

Could you elaborate a bit more regarding those two comments as I'd like to know what makes you think so?

Cunard wrote:

destere wrote:

peterinlisbon wrote:

It's interesting how each airline has more or less taken over one airport: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

BA is far bigger at LCY than Flybe...

As I've already pointed out and clearly remarked upon in my post earlier in this thread!

BACF 35 destinations
Flybe 9 destinations

You were late to the party, Cunard. I had mention dominance at LCY in reply 7.

[email protected] wrote:

Cunard wrote:

destere wrote:

BA is far bigger at LCY than Flybe...

As I've already pointed out and clearly remarked upon in my post earlier in this thread!

BACF 35 destinations
Flybe 9 destinations

You were late to the party, Cunard. I had mention dominance at LCY in reply 7.

Well I'll give you that one as your absolutely correct you had mentioned it in your post 7 which was obviously prior to mine as my ''more in depth and detailed'' post was reply 9

Cunard wrote:

Two comments that you have quoted that I don't fully understand which are,

Turku happens to be the best place in the world?

And

The airport is the most convenient for passengers I've ever seen?

Could you elaborate a bit more regarding those two comments as I'd like to know what makes you think so?

Well of course the best to do is to visit the place, then you'll find out for yourself. But to put it short;

- The best place because it is just the right size and vibe. It has everything you could possibly imagine to need - but it's not a megacity, it is possible to manage properly. It is friendly, actually a truly multi-cultural city where multiculturalism works, people are honest and helpful. And just hop on a boat and you'll figure everything else out (you can do that even free of charge). Lot's of options for recreational activities. History, or actually pre-history dates back thousands of years, and you can feel it in a good way. City center is very lively, by the river Aura, always stuff happening.

- The airport? It's a 15-minute bus-ride from downtown. You get off the bus (or your own car - plenty of parking available at the main entrance, also car rental is available), if you're travelling without luggage you will be at your gate 2-5 minutes later. With luggage you may need to add 5 more minutes. It is located at an intersection of North-South and East-West highways. My personal best is the plane landing in RIX exactly 2 hours after walking through my front door at home. And it takes me 45 minutes to get to the airport, no matter what time of day I'm flying. No traffic. Ever. The airport is clean, the bathroom is never crowded, free Wifi, small duty free and a cafe. TKU is in my opinion how air travel was initially planned - and how it worked in the 1920's and 1930's. It speeds up your traveling, eases the stress.

Carlos01

Thanks for your detailed reply but my local airport is the same less than 45 mins off the plane and I'm at home, it has a couple of small shops, free wifi, uncrowded toilets, car parking directly in front of the terminal, train directly from the airport station to the city in 7 minutes.

The city that I live isn't a mega city either although it's population is around 350K, it has a long history pre dating thousands of years prior to the Bronze Age and has the second most preserved medieval walls in the entire country.

It's the country's 7th largest university city with approximately 35k students split between two university's, it has an excellent vibe, great night life and shopping.

It is a major port and is Northern Europes busiest cruise turnaround port and the country's second biggest container terminal.

The city is just under a 15 minute drive from a National Park, the city itself has more open green space than any other city in the country outside of London.

The city and it's surrounding area has recently been voted 7th in a poll as the most desirable places to live in the country.

I love my city and I'm proud to come from my city but all of that doesn't make it the best place in the world.

After visiting 327 places in 94 countries my home city of Southampton is definitely not the best place in the world.

FYI I have actually been to Turku TWICE, the most recent visit was during the summer whilst on a visit to the Meyer Werft Turku Shipyard, I stayed in the city for three days and two nights.

Lovely city I'll agree with you but ''best place in the world'' is obviously a very personal view of your home city.

Cunard wrote:

Ryanair have always been the dominant airline at Stansted from day that they moved their operations over from Luton in 1992 superseding Air UK at Stansted that had just been taken over by KLM and renamed KLM UK with a dramatically reduced network from the airport.

Without wanting to stray too much from the topic, which I fear I might, and not wanting to seem picky, which I fear I might, I worked at STN during the late 1990s and have a few observations about that recollection. Ryanair were significant, but very far from dominant for another 12-13 years

Certainly the Dutch part owned Air UK in 1992, but they didn't take it all over until 1997. The KLM UK brand launched in 1998 and the STN network wasn't much reduced at all. The Dutch responded to BA's LCC start up 'Go' by de-merging STN from the rest of KLM UK and forming Buzz, which took STN (apart from Amsterdam) and they actually expanded somewhat to a total of 18 aircraft based at STN by 2002.

Go built up to around 20 aircraft based at STN (from memory Bristol had maybe 5 or 6) between 1998-2002.

During this time although STN had more Ryanair routes than anywhere else, but that only was Dublin, Kerry, Cork, Knock, Prestwick, Torp, Skavsta, Malmo, St Etienne, Carcassonne, Treviso, Pisa and Rimini. This made them a reasonably distant third place (6 or 7 aircraft based from my foggy memory).

People also forget that Aer Lingus, Lufthansa and SAS built up reasonably large scale secondary London operations at STN from the late 1990s.

Up until the 9/11 shake up STN was quite diverse and Ryanair most certainly wasn't dominant, they were a significant player, but not dominant. What then happened was:

- Aer Lingus, Lufthansa and SAS pulled out post 9/11
- KLM sold Buzz to Ryanair post 9/11
- 3i sold Go to Easyjet post 9/11
- Easyjet steadily shrunk STN in favour of LGW (and to a lesser extent Southend), I think it is less than half the size they inherited (but stand to be corrected)
- Ryanair boomed and built on their combined FR/Buzz base with their second order of 737-800s (the legendary discounted one) and became dominant by 2005/6

One last note. Remembering back to when FR flew Romanian 1-11s and elderly 737 cast offs, we were convinced (and sad that) Aer Lingus starting up on the Dublin route would be the end Ryanair! How spectacularly wrong we were......

To re-iterate Ryanair01 post drift in 1996 Ryanairs Stansted destinations where Connaught, Cork, Dublin and Glasgow Prestwick, this had been launched in September 1995 I think. At this time Air UK still had a large operation with flights to key UK domestic and European cities. Air UKs operation gradually reduced from the mid 90's onwards due to low cost competition, I seem to remember Nice and Madrid lost Air UK service first as a result of easyjet launching these routes at Luton. As Ryanair01 stated go-fly commenced operations and Ryanair started to expand into Europe, I seem to remember MOL even publicly saying he was going after Air UKs network. This in turn attracted the the big European carriers so at one point some routes had 3 airlines competing - Frankfurt had KLM UK and Lufthansa with Ryanair to Hahn. Oslo had SAS, Color air and Ryanair to Torp.

Ryanairs Stansted network is a good example of how Ryanair have re-invented itself over the years. Initially Ireland, then expanding into Europe but to secondary airports within 1-2 hours flight time from STN. A lot of these shorter routes have ceased while longer holiday routes started and now a pretty comprehensive network to key European airports many Air UK used to fly in the 90's including Nice and Madrid.

amc737

Ryanair01 and amc737

Both excellent posts and between you both I think that you have summed it up very well indeed and although the information that I provided in my post wasn't anywhere as detailed as either of yours I should have made more of an effort even if it was totally drifting off the original thread ;:)

Upto the events of 9/11 Stansted had quite a variety of airlines but not as many as today even though Ryanair is very much the dominant carrier by a very large margin.

But I guess we're getting off topic aren't we and having thread drift, perhaps start a dedicated thread to Stansted instead!

Carlos01 wrote:

lightsaber wrote:

More runways!

Carlos01 wrote:

This is just awesome. Direct flight from the mental capital of the world, TURKU, to London! It’s about bloody time!

What do you mean?

In US Jargon Mental=Insane FYSA.

Mental=Intellectual, isn't that Boston with the record number of University students?

Lightsaber

Ok, I did not mean anything related to mental problems. I didn't want to use the word "spiritual" either, because I don't imply anything religious with it. This one is very hard to translate. Apparently. It's just that Turku happens to be the best place in the world, kind of like the alpha and the omega. Where everything begins and ends. The city of absolute good. But I'll settle with the heavy metal capital.

One way or the other - it's great to have more connections. The airport is the most convenient for passengers that I've ever seen.

Spirituality has zero to do with religion. Try again.

Ryanair01 wrote:

One last note. Remembering back to when FR flew Romanian 1-11s and elderly 737 cast offs, we were convinced (and sad that) Aer Lingus starting up on the Dublin route would be the end Ryanair! How spectacularly wrong we were......

Aer Lingus started STN before Ryanair. When Ryanair followed shortly after, Aer Lingus began their onslaught, fares were slashed and flights were rescheduled to be earlier than Ryanair. It was brutal.

At the time Ryanair were requested to meet with the Irish department of transport to update them on its financial status. With the airline on its knees the Irish government wanted to support them without actually investing money so they ended up giving Ryanair exclusive rights to Stansted, throwing Aer Lingus off the route. The same happened on Liverpool and Munich for a period of three years while Aer Lingus got Manchester and Paris. It gave Ryanair enough time to find its feet, the Ryan family agreed to invest £20million following the decision and Aer Rianta quietly forgot about a £1million debt the airline owed them in airport fees.

Aer Lingus eventually returned to Stansted, maybe some people did think this would be the end of Ryanair on the route but they’d already transformed themselves at this point and had O’Leary at the helm so things were very different.

Wizz Air have announced Gatwick - Cluj-Napoca from 31/03/2019:

Bedfordshire has never been a Cluj magnet.
Changed days

Wizz Air fleet

An overview of the Wizz Air fleet by base:

Budapest 13 (14 from April)
Bucharest 10 (11 from April)
London Luton 9 (10 from July, 11 from September)
Warsaw 8
Cluj-Napoca 7
Sofia 7
Katowice 7
Gdansk 6 (7 from April)
Skopje 4
Vilnius 4
Vienna 3 (5 from February)
Kiev 3 (4 from March)
Chisinau 2
Iasi 2
Sibiu 2
Kutaisi 2
Debrecen 2
Tuzla 2
Craiova 2
Riga 2
Belgrade 2
Wroclaw 2
Timisoara 2
Poznan 2 (0 from March / base closing)
Varna 1 (2 from July)
Krakow 0 (1 from May, 2 from September)

Pretty interesting the size of the Cluj base. 7 aircraft for a city of around 400.000 inhabitants is one to consider.

Other than Turkish, Lufthansa, and LOT, the city doesn't see much presence of international carriers year-round. Even the local TAROM and Blue Air just operate with a tiny network to main cities like Bucharest and Iasi.

Ryanair will only start in 2019 with a flight to Southend.