Wizz Air passenger traffic rockets amid Omicron concerns
Passenger traffic on low-cost carrier Wizz Air has continued to grow in November, amid concerns for the new Covid variant, Omicron.
The airline announced this morning that last month it carried more than 2 million passengers, a 375.7 per cent increase compared with the same time last year. The company’s load factor also increased by 7.9 percentage points, going up to 76.1 per cent from 68.2 per cent registered in 2020.
Despite the new Omicron variant threatening to hinder all the progress made by the aviation industry so far, Wizz Air remains positive, focusing on preparing for next summer’s pent-up demand.
Speaking at London’s World Aviation Festival, Wizz Air’s president Robert Carey called the ongoing situation “a bit of a roller-coaster.”
“For us it’s been pretty much the same playbook we have been seeing,” he said. “We will adjust up as we need to and adjust down as we need to, and roll with the restrictions as they change.
“The core of our business is worker traffic, and those people still need to travel with or without the pandemic.”
Wizz Air has been aggressively preparing for life to go back to normal, announcing recently an agreement with Airbus to buy 102 A321 aircraft. To be delivered between 2025 and 2027, the aircraft will be divided between 75 A21neo and 27 A321XLR, City PM reported.
The carrier could also buy an additional 19 A321neo, after Airbus granted rights for delivery of 75 planes of the same model in 2028-2029.
Wizz Air also announced today that, for the rolling 12 months to November 2021, it offset 66.2g per passenger – among the lowest CO2 emissions per passenger/km. Also compared with the same time the previous year, emissions were 8.4 per cent lower.
The announcement comes a couple of months after the airline’s chief executive Jozsef Varadi branded carbon offsetting schemes “a bit of a joke”, despite offering them as part of Wizz Air’s sustainability programme.