Wizz Air cancels 10 per cent of flights as airline battles ongoing travel chaos

Wizz Air has announced it will cut additional flights from its summer schedule in a bid to combat the ongoing travel chaos. 

Chief executive Jozsef Varadi said that cancellations will amount to 10 per cent of summer flights, up from the 5 per cent announced on 11 July.

“We’ve been going through some real pain in terms of staff shortages at airports and air traffic control,” Varadi told Bloomberg. “We decided to trim capacity further to create more contingency and more of a buffer.”

The announcement comes on the heels of Wizz Air’s first quarter results, which saw the budget carrier post a statutory loss of £380m despite a more than 300 per cent increase in both passengers and revenue.

The low-cost airline flew more than 12m customers across Europe amassing a revenue of €808.8m (£608m), while ticket revenues went up by almost 250 per cent.

However, continued disruption, flight cancellations and the ongoing fuel crisis increased unit costs by more than 150 per cent, which contributed to a statutory loss of €452.5m (£380m), as of three months ended 30 June. 

“Whilst we are rebuilding the airline with greater scale we remain very conscious of the challenging macroeconomic and operational backdrop,” Varadi said.

“Fuel prices for the quarter were double pre-pandemic levels. Lingering restrictions from Covid-19 remained, particularly during April and May, while the war in Ukraine and supply chain disruptions affecting air traffic control, security and ground operation resources have impacted our utilisation.”

He said unit costs for the quarter were up 40 per cent from pre-pandemic, with three-quarters of it driven by inflation.

Aviation analyst Sally Gethin told City A.M. Wizz Air’s results were “representative of the turbulence of the aviation industry at present.”

“Despite earning strong revenues and high passenger load percentages, it is still operating at a loss and having to trim capacity,” she said.

“The airline is holding its nerve and hunkering down with a resilience strategy especially in its core market of Central and Eastern Europe to see it through the summer months with an eye on a return to profitability this time next year.”

Looking ahead to the rest of the summer, Varadi added that Wizz Air “expects to operate around 30 per cent higher ASKs (available seat per kilometre) in the summer compared to pre-pandemic levels.”