“At the current growth rate we can be expected to boost our presence in Romania, bring more planes and launch new routes. I think we will develop our network,” the executive who started the airline about fourteen years ago told ZF.
Wizz Air, a company whose revenue stands at EUR1.2 billion a year, carried 19.2 million passengers on the routes it operates in Europe and Asia in 2015. Romania generated almost one quarter of its traffic.
Wizz Air Romania, the fiscal entity registered in Romania, reported zero revenue to the Finance Ministry in 2014, but judging from the number of passengers in Romania and sales, revenue should amount to about EUR270 million to EUR300 million, according to ZF’s calculations.
Wizz Air, the local market leader, currently operates 18 aircraft in Romania, carrying 4.5 million passengers to and from the country’s airports. It became market leader in 2011, when it beat national airline Tarom.
Since then it has gained more than half a million passengers a year and reached almost 35% share of a market of 13 million people who travelled by plane to and from cities in Romania, according to ZF estimates.
Second leading airline in the country is Tarom, followed by Blue Air, and Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, whose goal is to carry 10 million people in Romania five years.
Jozsef Varadi says he comes to Romania several times a year and the country is important for his company, because it is one of its biggest markets.
Wizz Air operates 108 routes to 17 countries from eight airports in Romania, he added.
Wizz Air first arrived in Romania in 2006, when it started operating a Targu-Mures-Budapest flight. It carried 17,000 people in its first year on this market. It has recently announced it will compete Tarom on the Cluj-Napoca-Bucharest route as of June. New domestic routes might be added, Wizz Air’s CEO said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)