Wizz Air carries 40% more passengers in March but load factor drops

Discount carrier Wizz Air saw the number or travellers that it carried jump by nearly half last month, but the outfit's load factor dropped as it added capacity even more quickly.

Wizz transported 40% more passengers in March versus the month before to reach 768,113.

But the Eastern Europe-focused airline's load factor dropped from 69.8% in February to 62.5%, as the company increased the number of available seats from 382,928 to 480,203.

The company's load factor was thus 29.4% below its year-earlier level, versus 24 percentage points less in February.

The rolling load factor for the last 12 months meanwhile was at 63.9%, against 67.1% in February, and 29.6 percentage points beneath its year earlier levelm underscoring the depth of the downturn triggered by the pandemic.

The 12-month average load factor to the end of February was 26.5 points below its year-earlier level.

In March, Wizz Air also opened new routes from Tel Aviv to Greece, from Abu Dhabi to Kazakhstan and from Poland to five more destinations across the Mediterranean.

The day before, the Prime Minister had cautioned that the planned re-opening of non-essential overseas travel from 17 May could be pushed back due to resurgent Covid-19 infections in many countries on the continent.

Nevertheless, it should be countries including Greece had been among the fastest thus far in Europe in rolling out their vaccination programmes.