Bright prospects for Wizz Air, though many aircraft will have to be grounded

The Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air increased its revenues by almost a third and turned a loss into a profit in its recently closed financial year, as it seeks to improve its percentage of punctual flights to 80%. In the first half of the financial year and until the end of the year, Wizz Air expects to be without around 50 of its aircraft, with an average engine repair time of 300 days.

Wizz Air closed its financial year with great results

Wizz Air closed its financial year to the end of March 2024 with revenues of EUR 5.073 billion, an increase of 30.2% compared to the previous year, according to its results announcement. The airline’s fuel costs were 5% lower than the previous year.

The result was positively impacted by strong travel demand and fare increases, while financials were negatively impacted by Pratt & Whitney GTF engine and supply chain issues, inflation and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, according to AIRportal.hu.

The airline offered 69 million seats on its flights between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024, an increase of 18% compared to the previous year. A total of 62 million people flew on the flights, an increase of 21%. The average load factor was 90.1%, an improvement of 2.3 percentage points compared to the previous year.

Wizz Air completed 99.4% of its scheduled flights and 65.3% of flights were on time (i.e. within 15 minutes of the scheduled departure time, according to industry standards), a 10 percentage point improvement compared to the previous period. Wizz has a total of 193 airports in 53 countries and operates 33 bases, with its workforce increasing by 600 employees to 8,000 in the financial year.