Wizz Air Abu Dhabi shuts down

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

• Dominic says:

  15 Jul15 July 03:29

  A shame about Wizz Air AD. The Indian market is highly restrictive, giving Indian airlines protected growth (unsure about Pakistan). Tim Cook was talking about his frustration RE this recently

  • Anonymous says:

    15 Jul15 July 07:57

    *Clark, even!

    • ADS says:

      15 Jul15 July 10:34

      Tim Emirates even!

  • Dubious says:

    15 Jul15 July 14:43

    Are you getting confused with your whizzy MacBook Air?

• Paul says:

  15 Jul15 July 06:43

  Good luck getting EU261 rights out of Wizz Air. Nasty company, horrible to deal with.

  • Pat says:

    15 Jul15 July 06:52

    Their shareholders seem to think so too.

  • Thywillbedone says:

    15 Jul15 July 06:57

    Like many companies they have a playbook of making it relatively difficult to get what you are entitled to. They understand that many people will fold at the first sign of resistance. With a little persistence, I got full compensation on my last EU 261 flight. I’m playing a similar game with Virgin Media at the moment …£100 account credit promised but not delivered …it is what it is unfortunately.

  • Rhys says:

    15 Jul15 July 09:05

    I suspect most of Wizz Air Abu Dhabi’s flights wouldn’t be eligible for EU261 regardless.

    • Lady London says:

      15 Jul15 July 17:21

      Only the outward ones from UK or Europe.

      • Jonathan says:

        15 Jul15 July 19:26

        A lot of Wizz Air Abu Dhabi’s routes don’t touch UK / EU airports

        That doesn’t apply to all Wizz Air flights !

        • Alex Sm says:

          17 Jul17 July 09:11

          Where do they go then? ❓

• Matty says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:55

  Etihad had some very cheap fares out of Vienna and Rome in direct competition with Whizz to Abu Dhabi. Picked up a return for £118 with Etihad. Full service onboard. Also had status at the time, so free seat selection, priority boarding etc. Imagine those will vanish now.

  • David says:

    15 Jul15 July 13:21

    100% vanish. No more competition for rivals so prices will increase across the board. Shame. I flew with them to UAE and Maldives when they first started route. £300 each or so rtn. I understood the consequences but it gave we the people a choice.

• YH says:

  15 Jul15 July 08:01

  Sad news about Wizz, I used them a lot in the region and was about to buy the £350 Discount Club Premium since I flew them so much!

  I flew with the Air Arabia Abu Dhabi subsidiary yesterday which is also a LCC, seats are nicer than Wizz, could be a good alternative. They operate the routes I use so works for me.

• jjoohhnn says:

  15 Jul15 July 09:13

  Will Wizz Air still fly to Abu Dhabi from other bases or are they withdrawing completely from the region?

  • David says:

    15 Jul15 July 13:23

    Completely. Weird that they will fly to Saudi when the wear and tear from weather should be on par or worse then UAE. Money talks probably.

  • janolabs says:

    15 Jul15 July 14:49

    It seems the only routes staying are from Budapest, Vienna and Krakow.

• ADS says:

  15 Jul15 July 10:36

  The Club Hotel at Goffs – 25 minutes from DUB is marketing bs!

  35 minutes at best … usually considerably more since that section of the M50 is almost always crazy busy

• Londonsteve says:

  15 Jul15 July 13:24

  I wonder how they’ll now utilise all the XLRs they’ve got on order. Near enough nobody in western Europe will find it acceptable to fly in a 321 with 240 seats on a route over 5 hours no matter how cheap it is, especially when their competition might be Middle Eastern carriers.

  • ADS says:

    15 Jul15 July 13:46

    Ryanair have a good few 5+ hour flights – mostly between the Canaries to Poland

    but a max of 2,100 nm … still way short of the 737-8200 MAX range of around 3,300 nm

    maybe Wizz Air are going to start trans atlantic flights?

    • Jonathan says:

      15 Jul15 July 19:37

      It’s unlikely we’ll see transatlantic flights with so many tourists turning away from the U.S. since about the start of the year, plus Norse’s base is in one of the most western parts of Europe, anything much further west, it wouldn’t be economically viable for Wizz Air to be based.

      All that doesn’t even consider how they’d be able to actively offer a service that people would go for when there’s already numerous carriers operating those type of routes

    • Londonsteve says:

      15 Jul15 July 21:04

      They’ve expressly stated that they’ve no plans to fly TATL.

      Having said that, some of their CEE bases lack a direct flight to the US, most notably BUD, despite considerable VFR traffic. I wouldn’t be surprised if they launch a flight to Newark, or even Stewart to put some of these surplus planes to work. 9 hours westbound will be a bummer, but arguably still better than first travelling to VIE airport, or changing planes at LHR as most of the TATL passengers seem to.

  • Rob says:

    15 Jul15 July 14:24

    BA is flying short haul aircraft to Larnaca, Cairo, Tel Aviv …

    • Jonathan says:

      15 Jul15 July 19:32

      Don’t forget Amman !

      Those reasons alone are enough to make me want to use alternative carriers, it’s seriously awful service BA offers for flights of that time length when they’re a legacy carrier, if one books with a low-cost, price sensitive carrier, not too much can be expected, you shouldn’t think that sort of service is acceptable for a carrier that offers a seat like CS

      • Paul says:

        15 Jul15 July 19:50

        Absolutely

    • Londonsteve says:

      15 Jul15 July 21:07

      Are any of those over 5 hours? I think you can tempt people into a 28 inch seat pitch and no entertainment up to 5 hours (at the right price) but in western European markets, anything beyond this is no go unless it’s a seriously high volume city pair so that you can cream off the ultra price sensitive to fill 240 seats 2-3x a week.

      • Londonsteve says:

        15 Jul15 July 21:12

        Wizz have regulatory permission to fly BUD, VIE and MXP to India. I could see LTN-BOM working well a few times a week, assuming they could get permission to fly from the UK too. Perhaps even using 5th Freedom rights to continue on to Manila. Both markets have plenty of demand from flyers looking for the absolute cheapest price, VFR and migrant workers in the main.

        • flyer says:

          2 Aug2 August 20:22

          LTN-BOM?
          No way. Even the XLR cannot fly this distance, particularly not the return flight BOM-LTN against prevailing northwesterly winds.
          In addition to that, the runway in LTN would be too short to get an XLR at MTOW out of there.

      • ADS says:

        16 Jul16 July 11:36

        yesterday’s BA313 AMM-LHR took 5:53 (avoiding Israeli airspace) and the previous day’s took 5:46 … even when they fly direct it’s still around 5 hours.

        and don’t forget BA891 TBS-LHR which is often around 5:30 … but yesterday took nearly 6 hours!

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.