LONDON – Wizz Air, the Hungarian Ultra Low-Cost Carrier (ULCC), has announced to drop 84 routes from sales permanently, originating from EU and International destinations across its network.
The most affected country from this move is Italy, which contributes to a third of these dropped routes, which was once Wizz Air’s most served country.
This announcement by Wizz Air has also been addressed by the other ULCC, where the same pattern has been observed where the competing ULCC are dropping routes similar to Wizz Air.
The routes that are seen most affected are those connecting Western Europe to Middle East Turkey and North Africa accounting for almost half of the dropped routes as reported by SchengenVisaInfo.com.
Vienna, the most affected airport with 12 dropped routes to Alghero, Charleroi, Cologne, Dortmund, Eindhoven, Faro, Madrid, Menorca, Oslo, Skavsta, Tallinn, and Warsaw.
The glorified union of Wizz Air and Vienna airport from 2018 has accounted for significant growth by LCC and ULCC accounting for 12.3 million seats in 2019.
Despite all the airlines across the globe are being affected by the pandemic waves, the disproportionate impact on Wizz Air and Ryanair is alarming, as most of their routes are considerably new.
Almost 15 of Wizz Air routes out of Vienna are in direct competition with that of Ryanair including Skavsta, the most interesting 103 KM route from Vienna to Stockholm.
The other notable airports affected by this move from Wizz Air includes Cyprus Larnaca Airport with staggering 8 route cuts, followed by Warsaw (7 Routes), Naples (6 Routes) cuts, Gdansk, Milan Malpensa (5 Routes), Eindhoven (5 Routes), Dortmund (4 Routes), Sofia (4 Routes), and Ukraine Zaporizhzhia (3 Routes).
Additionally, Wizz Air will also drop its service to Bodø in Norway on Bodø – Gdansk route and Bodrum – Rome route dropping its services to a famous Turkish Resort destination.
Casablanca, Morocco entered the Wizz Air network earlier this summer and is being served from Italy, with flights from Malpensa, Rome, Venice while dropping Bologna and Naples from its schedule.
A report from European Travel Council (ETC) asserts that the travel costs have decreased significantly over the past two decades, with global average spending per international trip across all destinations has been declined by 17% in 2019 from that of 2000 comparison.
This further concludes that the LCC and ULCC are on the verge of their final leg of the journey, where the model no longer serves its purpose of offering significantly lower or inexpensive tickets over that of full carriers.
With this move, it can be asserted that the Omicron variant and its rapid outbreak across Europe is forcing many Low-Cost Carriers and Ultra Low-cost Carriers to take drastic measures.
