Wizz Air plans to station an Airbus A321neo at Brasov and add four international routes, extending a regional expansion that has helped widen its capacity lead in Romania.
The Hungarian ULCC plans to open its 10th Romanian base at Brasov-Ghimbav International Airport from Dec. 17. The four new services will connect the central Romanian city with Barcelona and Madrid, as well as Chisinau, Moldova, and Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden, Germany.
Additionally, service to Nuremberg, Germany, will resume on Oct. 26. Wizz says the additions will take its Brasov network to 15 routes serving seven countries.
The airline has carried more than 800,000 passengers at Brasov since launching service in August 2023, shortly after the airport opened. OAG Schedules Analyser data shows Wizz will offer approximately 200,600 departure seats from Brasov during summer 2026, up 165% from about 75,600 a year earlier.
Overall airport capacity is set to more than double to approximately 203,500 seats, giving Wizz a 98.6% share. Its summer network comprises Budapest, Dortmund, Katowice, London Luton, Memmingen, Milan Malpensa, Naples, Nuremberg, Rome Fiumicino and Warsaw. Romanian commercial airline AnimaWings also serves Brasov, operating flights to Heraklion.
The planned Brasov base forms part of a broader shift in the Romanian market, where capacity growth is increasingly extending beyond the country’s largest gateways. OAG data shows that total scheduled departure capacity from Romania has risen from about 8.67 million seats in summer 2023 to almost 10.96 million in summer 2026, an increase of 26.4%.
Bucharest Henri Coandă International Airport remains the largest growth market in absolute terms, adding about 1.11 million seats over the period. However, regional airports have also expanded strongly. Capacity at Craiova is up almost 60% from summer 2023, Suceava has grown by 35.6% and Timisoara by 17.6%.
Wizz has been a major driver of that regional growth. Between summer 2023 and summer 2026, its capacity has increased by about 56% at Craiova, 42% at Suceava and 24% at Timisoara.
Overall, the Hungarian ULCC is offering approximately 5.62 million departure seats from Romania during summer 2026, up 30.8% from summer 2023, and accounts for 51.3% of the market.
Although the combined Ryanair and Ryanair UK operation has grown slightly faster in percentage terms, rising by 33.8% to about 1.42 million departure seats, Wizz’s starting position means the absolute capacity gap between the groups has widened from approximately 3.24 million seats in summer 2023 to 4.2 million this summer. Wizz now offers almost four times as many seats as Ryanair.
Elsewhere, TAROM’s market share has fallen from 13% to 8.1%, while AnimaWings has expanded. AnimaWings is scheduled to offer about 587,000 departure seats from and within Romania in summer 2026, nearly twice its capacity a year earlier, making it the country’s fourth-largest airline.
Wizz currently operates 231 routes from 14 Romanian airports, connecting the country with 83 destinations in 26 countries.
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