It seems there’s more than enough room in Budapest for Europe's rival low-cost carriers Ryanair and Wizz Air. Wizz Air CEO József Váradi and Ryanair CMO Kenny Jacobs share their plans to Routes News magazine.
Slovenian carrier Adria Airways will provide an important hub link into the Star Alliance network via Lufthansa’s Bavarian hub at Munich Airport, while Wizz Air will introduce a low-fare offering to London, introducing 27,000 seats to and from Olsztyn-Mazury in the current calendar year.
The new connection will be the only direct flight between London Gatwick and Bucharest and will grow Wizz Air’s daily flights between the two cities to four, complementing its existing three times daily link from London Luton, a route that was introduced almost ten years ago in January 2007.
As the Eastern European market continues to grow, much of the growth can be attributed to two of the biggest low-cost carriers (LCCs) in the region. Ryanair and Wizz Air dominate much of the market, but despite growing service, only overlap on a handful of routes. Both carriers have announced plenty of new services in the last 12 months, many of which serve Poland – the largest of the Eastern European air transport market with a third of all seats.
Wizz Air is already the leading airline in the Romanian market having overtaken the capacity offering of national carrier TAROM in 2014. It currently offers 114 routes from the country’s airports providing low-fare access between Romania and the 16 countries for both business and leisure travellers. It has 19 aircraft based in Romania, an investment it values at nearly €2 billion and accounts for almost a third of all seats available from Romania’s airports.
The aviation sector in Poland plays an important role in the country’s economy and its network connectivity is unrecognisable today to that when the country joined the European Union in 2004, around 15 years after the end of communist rule. Routesonline investigates how point-to-point connectivity has helped put the country’s developing regional cities on the network map.
Wizz Air will transfer its flights to Gdansk, Skopje and Kiev from next month and at the same time end its flights to Riga. It will continue to connect Hamburg to Gdansk with four flights a week and Skopje and Kiev with twice-weekly flights from April 17, 2016.
Ryanair has more than quadrupled its capacity offering from Central and Eastern Europe over the past ten years with an average annual rise of 38.9 per cent between 2006 and 2015, according to schedule data from OAG. This has been to combat the emergence of Wizz Air, which over the same period has established itself as the largest carrier in these emerging markets.
The new routes will commence from the start of the summer schedules in late March 2016 with the introduction of twice weekly flights to both John Lennon Airport in Liverpool and Keflavik International Airport, serving Reykjavik from March 27, 2016 and a weekly flight to Ibiza from June 18, 2016 to September 17, 2016.
The latest expansion and the flights to two new European capitals will increase the Wizz Air network to 116 airports across 38 countries as it continues its rapid growth. Its departure capacity has grown at an average annual rate of 64.4 per cent between 2005 and 2104 from just over 2.5 million seats to almost 17.5 million last year. This year capacity will grow by an estimated 24.0 per cent to over 21.5 million departure seats.
The Polish market has contributed significantly to Wizz Air's success with around 40 per cent of its phenomenal growth linked to Polish customers and visitors in and out of the country. Next year it will again play host to Routes Europe.
The additional aircraft will arrive ahead of a July 22, 2016 launch of the four new routes and will also facilitate frequency growth in some of its existing markets. Wizz Air will offer new twice weekly links between Cluj-Napoca and Alicante, Berlin Schoenefeld, Billund and Doncaster Sheffield, with the German capital become the newest destination in its network of 113 airports.
Wizz Air introduced a twice weekly Birmingham – Warsaw route from September 14, 2015 and a twice weekly Budapest – Birmingham service from September 15, 2015 becoming the seventh new carrier to arrive at Birmingham in 2015.
Wizz Air made its debut in the Romanian market in July 2006 when it introduced flights to Tirgu Mures from Budapest and now offers flights from eight Romanian destinations comprising, Arad, Bucharest Henri Coanda, Cluj-Napoca, Constana, Craiova, Iasi, Sibiu, Tirgu Mures and Timisoara covering 95 routes to 15 different countries and offering more than two million annual seats from the country.
The new aircraft, which is set to arrive in March 2016, will support the new services between the Bulgarian capital and Alicante, Bristol, Hamburg Lubeck and Oslo Torp, which will be served with two weekly flights each.
The investigations concern in particular marketing fees paid to Wizz Air by Cluj-Napoca International Airport and low airport charges offered by Târgu Mureş Transilvania Airport to airlines operating there. Furthermore, the Commission will also investigate subsidies by local authorities to the airports themselves.
European low-cost carrier, Wizz Air has reported a record first quarter and has subsequently raised its profit forecast for the year by as much as €20 million.
Airline ancillary revenue has continued to grow for the eighth consecutive year, according to IdeaWorksCompany, who tracked 63 airlines and researched financial filings made by 130 airlines all over the world.
Wizz will start flights to Warsaw and Budapest from the West Midlands-based airport from September, as the airline progresses towards operating from primary airports within the UK.
Cologne Bonn Airport welcomes a total of 20 new destinations for its 2015 schedule, including ten new long-haul destinations operated by Eurowings, as well as four new airlines and ten new services.
The UK – Moldova market is dominated by Air Moldova which has offered continuous flights between London and Chisinau since March 2007. These were initially operated to Stansted Airport, before switching to Gatwick Airport from May 2009 and then returning back to Stansted from May 2013.
The airline will operate the route twice-weekly on Tuesdays and Saturdays to Dubai World Central Airport, where it became the first airline to operate flights to the UAE airport.
The regional airline closed its doors at 12:00 Noon on May 22, 2015 after operating flights that morning between Vilnius and Amsterdam, Paris and Tallinn. It is the latest in a long line of airline failures in Lithuania, which is proving to be among Europe’s most difficult country markets to serve.
The airline will base a new Airbus A320 at the airport which is already served by Wizz Air flights, making Debrecen the airline’s second Hungarian airport with base operations.
It has been a busy few weeks at Belfast International Airport as leisure carrier Jet2.com, low-cost carrier Wizz Air and low-fare giant easyJet have launched new air services or expanded their schedules from Northern Ireland’s largest air gateway. But the airport is still working hard to further improve Northern Ireland access as its strong delegation at this year’s Routes Europe in Aberdeen, Scotland, UK showed.
