In an exclusive interview with AeroTime, Wizz Air President Robert Carey shared his thoughts about their ambitious expansion plans.
Wizz Air has been a dominant airline in Europe in terms of post-pandemic recovery. Carey, who took up the role in December 2020, revealed to AeroTime that Wizz Air had exceeded the pre-pandemic capacity levels in August 2021.
“We are back at and above where we were pre-COVID-19,” Carey told AeroTime.
The airline currently has 41 bases and over 1,000 destinations stretching from Europe to the Middle East. Talking to AeroTime about further expansion plans into other regions, the president said that they are already in the process of expanding towards Africa with routes to Egypt and Morocco as well as Asia with destinations towards Kazakhstan.
“We are already expanding into those other geographies,” Carey added. “Wizz Air Abu Dhabi is a great market that could expand into other markets and we intend to do so.”
On the question of a new base, Carey said there were no further prospects in either region at the moment.
Regarding its long-haul fleet, Wizz Air’s president told AeroTime that the airline would not acquire any other aircraft than the 20 Airbus A321XLR it currently has on order.
Currently, Wizz Air has a total of 144 aircraft in its fleet, as per the airline’s data. Adding to that, Wizz Air operates 64 Airbus A320ceos, 41 Airbus A321ceos, 33 Airbus A321neos, and six Airbus A320neo aircraft.
During a press conference at Vilnius Airport (VNO) on August 10, 2021, Carey announced that the low-cost carrier would increase its network by adding new routes from Vilnius to Reykjavik, Iceland and Yerevan, Armenia.
This article was first published in August 2021.