Ouch: Wizz Air Removes 84 Routes From Sale

Wizz Air has been at the forefront of growth since the pandemic struck, introducing vast numbers of new routes, airports, and bases. However, the ultra-low-cost carrier has now removed 84 routes from sale, with more likely in the coming days. While it’d be easy to dismiss some as seasonal cuts or as simply not yet loaded for 2022, the author has been informed that they’re permanent.

Note that some of the 84 airport-pairs may have a few bookable flights in early January, but none bookable thereafter. Photo: Wizz Air.

What’s happening?

Almost a third of the 84 routes cut involve Italy, with Wizz Air adding seven Italian bases since the pandemic started, including at Milan Malpensa, Rome Fiumicino, and Venice Marco Polo. Italy has become Wizz Air’s most-served country.

A good chunk of Wizz Air’s recent expansion has involved routes within Western Europe, and over four in ten of its cuts include such routes. If routes connecting Western Europe to the Middle East, Turkey, and North Africa are included – again not touching bread-and-butter Central and Eastern Europe – they account for almost half.

No matter the airline, ‘route churn’ is inevitable. Some routes will perform decently, others poorly, and others marginally and require change to improve performance. Airlines like Wizz Air and Ryanair are disproportionately impacted, as so many of their routes are brand-new. The cuts come as Wizz Air Abu Dhabi begins Almaty and Kutaisi.

Although a mess of a map that’s very hard to read, these routes have all been removed. Image: GCMap.

Stay aware: Sign up for my weekly new routes newsletter.

Vienna sees the most cuts

With 12 routes withdrawn, Vienna is the most affected airport. Alghero, Charleroi, Cologne, Dortmund, Eindhoven, Faro, Madrid, Menorca, Oslo, Skavsta, Tallinn, and Warsaw are no longer served. The Austrian capital became a base for Wizz Air in 2018 and has seen huge growth by LCCs/ULCCs, culminating in 12.3 million seats in 2019, OAG shows – double two years previously.

Half of the 12 Vienna routes had head-to-head competition with Ryanair in the current year, which included Skavsta, 64 miles (103km) from Stockholm. However, since Ryanair added Stockholm Arlanda, it no longer serves Skavsta and its Vienna route shifted to Arlanda. Realistically, who, then, would use Wizz Air to Skavsta?

Other airports badly impacted by cuts include Larnaca (eight routes), Warsaw (seven), and the likes of Naples (six), Gdansk, Milan Malpensa, and Eindhoven (five each), Dortmund and Sofia (four apiece), and Zaporizhzhia (three). Birmingham has seen its 10-strong Wizz Air network fall by 30% with the end of Iasi, Larnaca, and Vilnius.

From	To
Bacau	Memmingen
Banja Luka	Eindhoven
Bari	Tel Aviv
Bologna	Casablanca
Brindisi	Bologna
Brindisi	Pisa
Brindisi	Santorini
Bucharest	Bergen
Bucharest	Cagliari
Bucharest	Rhodes
Budapest	Zaporizhzhia
Chișinău	Heraklion
Chișinău	Nice
Doncaster	Suceava
Dortmund	Bari
Dortmund	Zaporizhzhia
Gdansk	Bodø
Gdansk	Gatwick
Gdansk	Malaga
Gdansk	Santorini
Gdansk	Odesa
Birmingham	Iasi
Katowice	Mykonos
Katowice	Odesa
Katowice	Santander
Kharkiv	Venice Treviso
Krakow	Tromsø
Krakow	Trondheim
Krakow	Turku
Kutaisi	Poznan
Larnaca	Bergen
Larnaca	Birmingham
Larnaca	Dortmund
Larnaca	Eindhoven
Larnaca	Memmingen
Larnaca	Oslo
Larnaca	Skopje
Larnaca	Turku
Luton	Alicante
Luton	Faro
Luton	Rhodes
Lviv	Verona
Milan Malpensa	Eindhoven
Milan Malpensa	Lanzarote
Milan Malpensa	Lisbon
Milan Malpensa	Ohrid
Milan Malpensa	Zaporizhzhia
Naples	Casablanca
Naples	Chania
Naples	Fuerteventura
Naples	Lampedusa
Naples	Tenerife South
Naples	Verona
Palermo	Pisa
Rome Fiumicino	Antalya
Rome Fiumicino	Bodrum
Rome Fiumicino	Faro
Sofia	Budapest
Sofia	Rhodes
Sofia	Santorini
Sofia	Thessaloniki
Tuzla	Eindhoven
Varna	Barcelona
Varna	Heraklion
Vienna	Alghero
Vienna	Charleroi
Vienna	Cologne
Vienna	Dortmund
Vienna	Eindhoven
Vienna	Faro
Vienna	Madrid
Vienna	Menorca
Vienna	Oslo
Vienna	Skavsta
Vienna	Tallinn
Vilnius	Birmingham
Vilnius	Liverpool
Warsaw	Bergen
Warsaw	Bucharest
Warsaw	Preveza
Warsaw	Seville
Warsaw	Thessaloniki
Warsaw	Verona
Warsaw	Vienna

No more Bodø and Bodrum

It seems that Wizz Air will no longer serve the Norwegian city of Bodø nor the Turkish resort destination of Bodrum. Both airports had just one route: Bodø from Gdansk and Bodrum from Rome. The ULCC began the 903-mile (1,453km) link from Gdansk to Bodø in May 2019, while Rome-Bodrum began in July 2021. Neither is bookable in 2022.

Morocco’s largest city of Casablanca is interesting. In entered Wizz Air’s network in the summer just gone and has seen only routes from Italy: Bologna, Malpensa, Naples, Rome, and Venice. However, Bologna and Naples will no longer be served.

What do you make of Wizz Air’s cuts? Let us know in the comments. 

With thanks to Sean Moulton.

from Simple Flying https://ift.tt/3H3la9g
via IFTTT