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Wizz Air Hungary Légiközlekedési Kft. is a Hungarian[1][2] low-cost airline with headquarters in the Airport Business Park C2 in Vecsés, close to Budapest's Ferihegy Airport, Hungary.[3] The airline typically uses secondary airports serving many cities across Europe.
[edit] HistoryThe airline was established in September 2003. The lead investor is Indigo Partners, an American private equity firm [4] specializing in transportation investments. The first flight was made on 19 May 2004 from Katowice, 19 days after Poland and Hungary entered the European Union and the single European aviation market. The airline carried 250,000 passengers in its first three and a half months, almost 1.4 million passengers in the first year of operations and to date,10 million passengers. In 2007 Wizz Air carried 2.8 million passengers on its Polish routes. The airline's CEO and chairman is József Váradi, former CEO of Malév Hungarian Airlines. The company is registered in Pest County (Hungary)[5] with operating subsidiaries in Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. Wizz Air Bulgaria was established in September 2005[6]. József Váradi, Chief Executive Officer of Wizz Air, won the Ernst & Young award of the 'Brave Innovator' in 2007. The prize recognized the break through in the airline business in Hungary and the region, the business model and the business conduct of Wizz Air.[citation needed] In summer 2008 Wizz Air became the first low cost carrier in Ukraine.[citation needed] While attempting to hasten SkyEurope's demise in June 2009, Wizz Air claimed it has been "profitable for several years".[7] However, as a private company it is not required to publish its financial accounts. In November 2009, it emerged Wizz Air is significantly loss making and has never made a profit while delaying the pay back of €32 million of debt by five years.[8] Losses since commencing operations total €78 million.[9] In December 2009 Wizz Air was rated the European airline most likely to next go bust, according to a firm of bookmakers.[10] [edit] Services/destinationsFurther information: Wizz Air destinations Like Ryanair, Wizz Air prefers to land at smaller or secondary airports to reduce costs and fees. Wizz Air started new services between Katowice and London Gatwick in 2008[11]. Winter destinations from Warsaw are Milan Bergamo and Grenoble. In January 2008, flights started from Gdansk to Goteborg, Bournemouth and Coventry. In summer 2008, Wizz Air restarted the summer only services from Katowice and Budapest to Girona, as well as a new weekly service to Girona from Gdańsk. Other summer services from Budapest are Heraklion, Corfu, Burgas and Varna, from Katowice to Crete-Heraklion and Burgas, Warsaw to Corfu and Burgas. They also restarted the three-times weekly service from London Luton to Burgas. On 2 October 2008, Wizz Air announced that a number of their Romania services would have increased frequency following an order for three Airbus A320 aircraft[12]. Services began 15 February 2009 from Timisoara, on 1 March 2009 from Bucharest, and 1 May 2009 from Cluj-Napoca. Wizz Air Romania
Further information: Wizz Air Romania destinations Wizz Air Ukraine
Wizz Air Bulgaria
Further information: Wizz Air Bulgaria destinations From 26 July 2008, Wizz Air offered new destinations from Sofia to Varna, Barcelona, Valencia, Milan, Brussels and expanded the number of flights to London, Rome and Dortmund by commissioning another Airbus A320.   [edit] Service qualityAccording to customer reviews, Wizz Air is a 2 star airline, which makes it comparable to, for example, Ryanair, Bulgaria Air, bmibaby, S7 Airlines and Aerosvit Airlines. [13][14] Calls to customer service cost around 0.65 GBP per minute, according to Wizz Air's own homepage.[15] Wizz Air also announces that it takes more than 30 days to process customer complaint mails and as of September 2009 no longer answers those requests according to many users of their recently sprung consumer complaint site.[15] The website wizzairsucks.com was started to address customers' complaints.[16] Besides it being a "bad" airline, there are also people that say that it is 5 star. It has recently been known to be an anverage airline, from all the good and bad comments. Available statistics show that 77 out of 100 flights were in time, 23 were late or cancelled (eight were late, three very late, four excessively late, six cancelled).[17] [edit] FleetThe Wizz Air fleet consists of the following aircraft (as of 4 September 2009) [1]:
Twenty two aircraft operate under Wizz Air Hungary (a further two for Wizz Air Bulgaria and two for Wizz Air Ukraine). It has firm orders for 80 Airbus A320s. [18] All its A320s are powered by International Aero Engines V2500 engines, including those to be leased from GECAS. The 99.5% technical dispatch reliability is well above the world average.[citation needed] Maintenance is by the Lufthansa Technik maintenance organization. [19] WizzAir declaredly has no hot-spare aircraft until its fleet reaches 25 planes (expected mid-summer 2009). In case of technical problem delays or cancellations are inevitable. On 10 October 2007, Wizz Air confirmed an order for a further 50 Airbus A320 aircraft bringing its total commitments of that type up to 80 and an option for further 25 A320s.[20] During the 2009 Paris Air Show, Wizz Air signed a letter of intent with Airbus to purchase 50 shorthaul aircraft (possibly the A320) at a price of $3.8 billion. [edit] External links[edit] References
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