Wizz Air looks at fleet expansion despite signs of new travel clampdown

Wizz Air is shrugging off early signs of a new clampdown on international air travel, promising to expand its fleet by 50% over the next three years as rivals retrench.  Announcing a pre-tax loss of E107.4m in the first three months during the aviation industry’s worst-ever downturn, Jozsef Varadi, CE of the Hungarian carrier, said he expected a “rollercoaster” of measures across Europe as governments struggled to contain new coronavirus outbreaks after lockdowns were eased. Varadi, who in June sharply criticised the UK’s initial quarantine on travellers from coronavirus hotspots, said the situation was “very fluid . . . Measures are getting tightened up depending on the situation. But this is not only in one direction. It will be more like a rollercoaster and you will see countries and markets going up and down again.” Wizz’s pre-tax loss compared with a profit of E75.5m last time. Despite the volatile situation, Wizz expected to continue flying 65% to 70% of its flights over the rest of the year, with an average load factor — a measure of how full the aircraft are — of roughly the same level. The group had flown on average 11.5% of its capacity in Q1, but this had risen to 70% by the end of June, well above the industry average of 40%, he said. <br/>