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Wizz Air News and Discussion Thread - 2020

The CEO of Wizz is expecting a rebound to the 2019 level by the summer. Because of the lockdowns the January capacity is cut to 25% (compared to January 2020). He says that the capacity operated in December was 35% compared to December 2019 (which was in fact 32% according to their official stock exchange announcement while the passenger figure was down 80%). Yet he is still confident in long term growth prospects and sees much improved demand for the summer.

“I think if restrictions get removed by summer, I would say that summer 2021 would not be far away from summer 2019 from our perspective,” he said. “But you would not see that happening at many of the other airlines.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL8N2JI2CC

I'd say it's only the same ol' wishful thinking. He keeps repeating this every 3 months and blaming lockdowns when it's not happening while decreased travel demand is never mentioned. The demand is simply not there. The reported load of the new Italian and Norwegian domestic flights is bleak to say the least. The competitiors will all survive on government money. Calling all in for the summer is not a wise thing IMHO.

holczakker wrote:

I'd say it's only the same ol' wishful thinking. He keeps repeating this every 3 months and blaming lockdowns when it's not happening while decreased travel demand is never mentioned. The demand is simply not there. The reported load of the new Italian and Norwegian domestic flights is bleak to say the least. The competitiors will all survive on government money. Calling all in for the summer is not a wise thing IMHO.

I don't entirely agree with that.

Of course the demand is lower than it was before COVID-19, so those 2019 levels are perhaps a bit too much to ask for. However part of the reason the demand is low are the lockdowns, there are plenty of people who are eager to fly again once everything is back to normal. Now that the vaccinations have started, it's very reasonable to expect the travel restrictions to be lifted this summer. The decreased travel demand, certainly on LCCs, is only temporary.

They won't yet achieve the load factors they had before the crisis this summer, not everybody dares to fly yet. But the number of people who dare to fly this summer will be much higher than it is today, which is about at an all-time low. By summer most people will have been vaccinated, they'll still go on that trip that they have postponed the past year.

Wizz Air A320neo HA-LJB suffered some damage at GDN after being struck by a ground vehicle





https://twitter.com/airportwebcams/stat ... 87393?s=21

How did that happen? It doesn't look good.

The driver of that truck should have known his vehicle wouldn't fit under there. Or is it perhaps the other way around? It's like the aircraft was being pushed back and the truck was in the way. Then the question arises, why was it there?

Seems to be a water servicing gone bad. They need to reverse under the tail where the open panel is on the picture. My guess would be either a slippery apron or a pedal mishap.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

holczakker wrote:

I'd say it's only the same ol' wishful thinking. He keeps repeating this every 3 months and blaming lockdowns when it's not happening while decreased travel demand is never mentioned. The demand is simply not there. The reported load of the new Italian and Norwegian domestic flights is bleak to say the least. The competitiors will all survive on government money. Calling all in for the summer is not a wise thing IMHO.

I don't entirely agree with that.

Of course the demand is lower than it was before COVID-19, so those 2019 levels are perhaps a bit too much to ask for. However part of the reason the demand is low are the lockdowns, there are plenty of people who are eager to fly again once everything is back to normal. Now that the vaccinations have started, it's very reasonable to expect the travel restrictions to be lifted this summer. The decreased travel demand, certainly on LCCs, is only temporary.

They won't yet achieve the load factors they had before the crisis this summer, not everybody dares to fly yet. But the number of people who dare to fly this summer will be much higher than it is today, which is about at an all-time low. By summer most people will have been vaccinated, they'll still go on that trip that they have postponed the past year.

At the majority of their core market (CEE countries) the vaccination won't be finished by the summer. Most places the percentage of the people requesting to be vaccinated won't be enought to reach the critical 60% anyway. Mainly if the kids can't get the shot and they will keep spreading it. New strains emerging, governments not following the vaccination protocol established by the manufacturer etc etc. Things are no looking up in my view.

holczakker wrote:

PatrickZ80 wrote:

holczakker wrote:

I'd say it's only the same ol' wishful thinking. He keeps repeating this every 3 months and blaming lockdowns when it's not happening while decreased travel demand is never mentioned. The demand is simply not there. The reported load of the new Italian and Norwegian domestic flights is bleak to say the least. The competitiors will all survive on government money. Calling all in for the summer is not a wise thing IMHO.

I don't entirely agree with that.

Of course the demand is lower than it was before COVID-19, so those 2019 levels are perhaps a bit too much to ask for. However part of the reason the demand is low are the lockdowns, there are plenty of people who are eager to fly again once everything is back to normal. Now that the vaccinations have started, it's very reasonable to expect the travel restrictions to be lifted this summer. The decreased travel demand, certainly on LCCs, is only temporary.

They won't yet achieve the load factors they had before the crisis this summer, not everybody dares to fly yet. But the number of people who dare to fly this summer will be much higher than it is today, which is about at an all-time low. By summer most people will have been vaccinated, they'll still go on that trip that they have postponed the past year.

At the majority of their core market (CEE countries) the vaccination won't be finished by the summer. Most places the percentage of the people requesting to be vaccinated won't be enought to reach the critical 60% anyway. Mainly if the kids can't get the shot and they will keep spreading it. New strains emerging, governments not following the vaccination protocol established by the manufacturer etc etc. Things are no looking up in my view.

This is the reality !
At the current spead people here in Germany gets vaccinated the critical 60 - 70 % will be archieved in 2026 - 2027. Even if they can ramp up big way for sure , it will be not this summer ( pitty but true )

Wizz Air will be adding flights to Dubai for a limited time.

Source: Wizz Air LinkedIn




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They left DWC for AUH and now they are moving AUH flights to DXB. Cunning.

What benefit do they see in these temporary routes?

also any news about their Gatwick expansion they were complaining about slot squatting and restrictions however at the same time easyJet managed to secure more slots and base more aircraft, with Norwegian dead, that looks like a significant player freeing slots, also VS supposedly out of the Gatwick game, and BA reportedly closing the base however I suspect BA will just shrink the base not completely close it.

holczakker wrote:

They left DWC for AUH and now they are moving AUH flights to DXB. Cunning.

If you think of the United Arab Emirates of being not so united, Dubai has many different immigration rules to Abu Dhabi. For example:

Abu Dhabi has a green list for no quarantine, and a red list with 10 days quarantine that updates every two weeks - currently, nowhere in Europe is on the green list.
Dubai has no quarantine restrictions, so fly in and spend, spend, spend.

Understanding this, it then makes sense why they might be temporarily flying to DXB.

Yep.
So we might as well call it ".. fly in and spread, spread, spread".

Yeah, apparently DXB is turning into the place to go for Europeans wanting to escape from it all (and do a bit of spreading at the same time).

myki wrote:

holczakker wrote:

They left DWC for AUH and now they are moving AUH flights to DXB. Cunning.

If you think of the United Arab Emirates of being not so united, Dubai has many different immigration rules to Abu Dhabi. For example:

Abu Dhabi has a green list for no quarantine, and a red list with 10 days quarantine that updates every two weeks - currently, nowhere in Europe is on the green list.
Dubai has no quarantine restrictions, so fly in and spend, spend, spend.

Understanding this, it then makes sense why they might be temporarily flying to DXB.

If that were the case why just these 3 routes and not move the whole AUH network?

marcogr12 wrote:

myki wrote:

holczakker wrote:

They left DWC for AUH and now they are moving AUH flights to DXB. Cunning.

If you think of the United Arab Emirates of being not so united, Dubai has many different immigration rules to Abu Dhabi. For example:

Abu Dhabi has a green list for no quarantine, and a red list with 10 days quarantine that updates every two weeks - currently, nowhere in Europe is on the green list.
Dubai has no quarantine restrictions, so fly in and spend, spend, spend.

Understanding this, it then makes sense why they might be temporarily flying to DXB.

If that were the case why just these 3 routes and not move the whole AUH network?

Wizz Air Abu Dhabi (5W) is a joint venture between Wizz Air and, ultimately, the Abu Dhabi government, which would've done the flying for AUH-SOF and AUH-OTP. AUH-BUD was always by WIzz Air (W6), a separate airline, and I guess they have a few aircraft laying around at the moment, so why not try something new, even if temporary.

holczakker wrote:

Yep.
So we might as well call it ".. fly in and spread, spread, spread".

Actually, you need to have a negative test with you to get into Dubai.

myki wrote:

marcogr12 wrote:

myki wrote:

If you think of the United Arab Emirates of being not so united, Dubai has many different immigration rules to Abu Dhabi. For example:

Abu Dhabi has a green list for no quarantine, and a red list with 10 days quarantine that updates every two weeks - currently, nowhere in Europe is on the green list.
Dubai has no quarantine restrictions, so fly in and spend, spend, spend.

Understanding this, it then makes sense why they might be temporarily flying to DXB.

If that were the case why just these 3 routes and not move the whole AUH network?

Wizz Air Abu Dhabi (5W) is a joint venture between Wizz Air and, ultimately, the Abu Dhabi government, which would've done the flying for AUH-SOF and AUH-OTP. AUH-BUD was always by WIzz Air (W6), a separate airline, and I guess they have a few aircraft laying around at the moment, so why not try something new, even if temporary.

I checked the website..the day the DXB routes end (April), they revert back to AUH..We don't know what caused this temporary move for sure..If it's a case of countries on green list/red list why are they starting flights to Greece so soon then TLV,LCA etc

Wizz Air Abu Dhabi will launch flights to TLV

Source: https://gulfnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org ... 0608344840


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The UAE have there vaccination plan going very well, with such a small population if they keep this rate by may the whole nation will be immunised, and probably by March hit the critical 60% mass for deceleration of spread

Wizz Air cancels the majority of expansion they planned for BEG. Out of the new routes they announced only Hamburg and Sandefjord.
Routes like Barcelona, Lisbon, Milan, Charleroi, Cologne, Friedrichshafen and Turku seem to be terminated.

SZG which was launched last year will not resume in 2021.

https://www.exyuaviation.com/2021/01/wi ... grade.html

It seems that the summer schedule got the chop as well.

holczakker wrote:

It seems that the summer schedule got the chop as well.

In what sense? Do you know what was cut? How are their new bases like LCA or TIA performing?

Blerg wrote:

holczakker wrote:

It seems that the summer schedule got the chop as well.

In what sense? Do you know what was cut? How are their new bases like LCA or TIA performing?

No, no, sorry, I was too quick to say this. They removed several flights from BUD/VIE last evening only to replace them with different days (of the week) later, reshuffling the schedule.

Blerg wrote:

holczakker wrote:

It seems that the summer schedule got the chop as well.

In what sense? Do you know what was cut? How are their new bases like LCA or TIA performing?

I do not have details but it appears that the previously announced LCA - FKB will not be launched this summer.

Wizzair ranked 76th in European airline flight operations in the 3rd week of January 2021:

- Turkish Airlines had the highest number of flights with 560 flights on Wed 20 January (-4% compared to Wed 6 January with -21 flights),
- Air France (364 flights, -16%, -68 flights),
- Widerøe (317, -1%, -2),
- DHL Express (275, +48%, +89),
- KLM (242, -38%, -147),
- Pegasus (222, +0%, +0),
- Lufthansa (204, -37%, -121),
- Qatar (176, +9%, +15)
- SAS (164, -25%, -56).
- British Airways ranked 17th (83 flights, -34%),
- Ryanair ranked 23rd (67 flights, -82%),
- easyJet ranked 46th (37 flights, -77%)
- Wizz Air ranked 76th (20 flights, -92%).

For full report see: https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/defau ... 112021.pdf

Wizz Air to launch a new base in Sarajevo from 20 May 2021 with 9 new routes:

https://twitter.com/SeanM1997/status/13 ... 8299790337

Copenhagen - 3x weekly flights
Dortmund - 3x weekly
Memmingen - 3x weekly
Basel - 3x weekly
Brussels Charleroi - 2x weekly
London Luton - 2x weekly
Paris Beauvais - 2x weekly
Eindhoven - 2x weekly
Gothenburg - 2x weekly

Let's see if anything becomes of that. They have announced so much until now and so much of it was cancelled in the end.

Wizzair has announced a new seasonal base in Burgas.

https://wizzair.com/en-gb/information-a ... in-bourgas

They will be launching routes to Dortmund, Eindhoven, Kyiv, Liverpool, Poznan, Tel Aviv and Turku.

Wizzair will also be launching Chisinau - Eindhoven. Source (in Dutch):

https://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/nieuws/ ... t-moldavie

Wizzair will be competing against FlyOne on this route. It's pretty obvious they want to compete FlyOne out of business to have the Moldavian LCC market to themselves. From a Dutch perspective it's interesting that Chisinau is unserved from Amsterdam but two airlines serve it from Eindhoven.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

Wizzair will be competing against FlyOne on this route. It's pretty obvious they want to compete FlyOne out of business to have the Moldavian LCC market to themselves. From a Dutch perspective it's interesting that Chisinau is unserved from Amsterdam but two airlines serve it from Eindhoven.

But there's no slots at AMS
It's also a very low yield market, could maybe only work with incentives from EIN airport to make it happen?
But they could have tried Rotterdam, I don't know from a Dutch perspective which one would be more convenient if you actually live around Amsterdam?

Wizz Air announces 4th based aircraft in Tirana

https://www.tirana-airport.com/d/286/wi ... m-and-malm

New routes include: Ancona, Genoa, Malmo, Pescara, Rome-CIA and Stockholm-NYO

According to Instagram, Wizzair Abu Dhabi will launch two new routes to Kazakhstan. In May they'll be starting Nur-Sultan and Almaty from Abu Dhabi.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMZLcC6qSpZ/

Indigo Partners sold an aggregate of 7,692,308 ordinary shares in Wizz Air Holdings generating gross proceeds of approximately $556 million.

https://www.globalcapital.com/article/b ... -air-stake

After the sale Indigo left with approx 8.5 percent stake in the airline.

Wizz shares had been performing very well recently so probably not a bad time to sell.

I wonder if this increases or decreases the chance of a potential takeover?

So who are the top shareholders in Wizz Air right now?

EIBPI wrote:

Wizz shares had been performing very well recently so probably not a bad time to sell.

I wonder if this increases or decreases the chance of a potential takeover?

Crazy how highly priced they are even there COO and CEO sold shares in them, they are above pre pandemic levels while burning cash and taking loans. I understand they have taken opportunistic growth measures but still very inflated in my opinion.

They just announced another route, Dortmund to Palma de Mallorca. Clearly aiming at German holiday makers, Mallorca is a very popular holiday destination in Germany.

It was only just a few years ago they were known as "the eastern European airline", with no bases in Western Europe. Look at them now, opening one route within western Europe after another.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

They just announced another route, Dortmund to Palma de Mallorca. Clearly aiming at German holiday makers, Mallorca is a very popular holiday destination in Germany.

It was only just a few years ago they were known as "the eastern European airline", with no bases in Western Europe. Look at them now, opening one route within western Europe after another.

Looks like every new route they are opening up recently is leisure routes, a departure from there trusted VFR traffic. That's where they feel the recovery will be felt strongest the pent up demand for a nice holiday after all of this.

Let's wait and see what happens with all this. Somehow I doubt there will be much demand in June as we are almost in April and the situation in Europe is far from being stable. July and August are their most realistic bets at this point.

Haven’t seen this posted, 1 A320 and 4 A321s have been flown to CWL recently for continued storage. Reg are G-WUKC, G-WUKD, G-WUKI, G-WUKJ & G-WUKL

CWL757 wrote:

Haven’t seen this posted, 1 A320 and 4 A321s have been flown to CWL recently for continued storage. Reg are G-WUKC, G-WUKD, G-WUKI, G-WUKJ & G-WUKL

Interesting. How many active G registered planes do they have now? I guess they don't expect demand to recover as fast as some have predicted.

Wizzair with new base in Palermo from 1.6.21

PMO - Basel 2w
PMO - Bologna, Pisa daily
PMO - Treviso 5w
PMO - TRN 4w
PMO - Verona 3w
PMO - LTN 3w
also
Bologna - Brindisi 4w
Catania - Pisa 5w
MXP - Cagliari daily
Pisa - Brindisi 3w

Wizz is also opening for S21:
TLV-JTR 2w
TLV-JMK 2w
TLV-RHO 1w
TLV-HER 3w
TLV-LCA 3w

OSL-ALC 3w
OSL-LCA,CHQ,LPA,SPU 2w

WAW-HER,JTR, SKG, RHO,CHQ,ZTH, PVK 2w
KRK-HER, JTR 2w
OTP-CFU,ZTH 2w
KTW-CFU 2w
KIV-HER 2w
CLJ-JMK 2w
CLJ-ZTH 2w
IAS-JTR 2w
VNO-JTR 2w
VIE-CHQ 2w
GDN-HER 2w
GDN-JTR 2w
GDN-SPU 2w
KRK-SPU 2w
WRO-SPU 1w
DEB-JTR 1w
BUD-CHQ 2w

SOF-CHQ,CFU, JTR 2w
BHX-LCA 2w

Wizz should not be counting on UK market for the summer.

Member of government pandemic group says "extremely unlikely" holidays can be planned abroad. Risk of importing cases and new strains remains too high regardless of what the situation like in the UK.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56467813

Meanwhile, much of the rest of Europe is taking a turn for the worse currently, so who knows when restrictions will be lifted to make travel realistic this summer. I rather err on side of caution and keep borders closed.

Unfortunately most of these flights won't happen this summer. Maybe in 2022 if we are lucky.

Blerg wrote:

Let's wait and see what happens with all this. Somehow I doubt there will be much demand in June as we are almost in April and the situation in Europe is far from being stable. July and August are their most realistic bets at this point.

I recall people saying the exact same this time last year for last summer.

Look how that worked out.

EIBPI wrote:

Blerg wrote:

Let's wait and see what happens with all this. Somehow I doubt there will be much demand in June as we are almost in April and the situation in Europe is far from being stable. July and August are their most realistic bets at this point.

I recall people saying the exact same this time last year for last summer.

Look how that worked out.

I said they are the most realistic, not that it will happen. I think this summer demand will be better but it won't be fantastic as some like Wizz Air hope.

Looking at their website I see they are cancelling BEG-BVA for most of April, flights are scheduled to resume on 26.04. They are still scheduled to launch a new route to HAM on 28.03 which will operate once a week in April.
Most of their operations in BEG have collapsed and I think almost all destinations are operated once per week. That is those that they did not cancel or postpone.

Don't forget that last summer Wizz Air announced with much PR how they are boosting BEG to 3 A321 and how they are launching a whole range of new destinations. Look at where we are today.

Same story across the network really.

I am actually quite shocked at how bad the situation is at their biggest hub Budapest. Today and tomorrow they will operate only one flight which goes to Luton. I don't know how the situation is for them elsewhere but this is quite bad.
Bucharest seems to be performing a bit better for them as today they will have 8 departures.

From theaeronetwork : Wizz Air has extended Dubai service to 04JUL21, from Bucharest, Budapest and Sofia*, instead of 13/14APR21, 2 weekly each