Wizz Air Abu Dhabi ready to soar on robust bookings in winter months

Wizz Air Abu Dhabi is on track to record strong flight bookings in the winter months from December to February as the budget airline attracts repeat and price-sensitive customers increasingly on the hunt for travel bargains.

The airline is pushing its aircraft utilisation and capacity to satisfy demand on existing routes, managing director Johan Eidhagen said.

“There will be some last-minute bookings but December is going to be a very strong month for us,” he said on Thursday, adding that the last two weeks of December and the first week of January were three of its strongest weeks of the year.

“We have strong bookings already for January and February ... I’m pretty confident on the winter.”

Wizz Air Abu Dhabi expects to record double-digit growth in passenger numbers this year, Mr Eidhagen said, without providing an annual target.

The budget airline more than doubled passenger numbers to three million last year, up from 1.2 million passengers in the previous year, as the global aviation industry bounced back from the coronavirus-induced slowdown. Of these, more than 1.5 million were point-to-point passengers flying into Abu Dhabi.

The UAE capital is “on track” to meet its target of attracting 24 million visitors this year, up from 18 million last year, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism said previously.

Wizz Air Abu Dhabi’s load factor – a measure of how well an airline fills available seats – stood at 85 per cent in 2023 and is set to increase this year, Mr Eidhagen said.

Load factors of more than 90 per cent are “not uncommon” for budget airlines, he said.

Wizz Air Abu Dhabi, a joint venture between Hungary’s Wizz Air Holding and Abu Dhabi state holding company ADQ, has an air operator certificate in the UAE and launched operations in 2021 amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The airline moved its operations to Abu Dhabi International Airport’s new Terminal A in November, where its first flight took off on the second day of the month.

The new terminal building, which has an annual capacity of 45 million passengers, will allow the airline to expand its operations and offer a smoother travel journey, said Mr Eidhagen.

“The new terminal is, of course, a massive upgrade in capacity. So, it allows us to grow without restrictions so we can add more capacity,” he said. “And we focused quite a lot, together with the airport, on fine-tuning operations and improving efficiency.”

Last year, the budget airline added four new Airbus A321 jets, taking its total fleet to 12 aircraft, and increased its seat capacity by 135 per cent to 3.7 million seats.

Wizz Air Abu Dhabi added eight new destinations last year, taking its network to a total of 40 routes in 27 different countries from Abu Dhabi, and plans to introduce more this year, Mr Eidhagen said.

To meet the growth in its operations, the airline will begin a new round of staff recruitment by the start of its new financial year in April, after hiring about 300 pilots and cabin crew last year, he said.

The budget airline more than doubled passenger numbers to three million last year, up from 1.2 million in 2022