Wizz Air cancels Italian flights as airline warns demand could drop 10 per cent on coronavirus fears
Budget airline Wizz Air has warned that it could cut capacity by as much as 10 per cent from next month as fears over the coronavirus impact hit passenger demand.
The Hungarian carrier said that due to the impact on European air travel, it had adjusted its flight schedule to Italian destinations between 11 March and 2 April.
The impact on the airline’s financial situation will be made clearer when Wizz Air reports its full year results on 1 April.
Chief executive József Váradi said: “Our ever-disciplined attitude to cost enables Wizz Air to partly offset some of the headwinds due to the Covid-19 outbreak, which have driven a temporary decline in demand and an increase in the cost of disruption as we put the well-being of passengers and crew first”.
However, he added that Wizz Air’s “ultra-low cost business model” and “strong balance sheet and liquidity” would give the firm a significant competitive advantage over other airlines in the current challenging environment.
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Wizz Air is the latest airline to cancel flights in and out of Italy, following fellow budget carriers Ryanair and Easyjet in the last week.
On Monday British Airways said it would cancel more than 400 flights between 16 and 28 March from Heathrow airport to cities in Europe, as well as one daily British Airways flight to New York’s JFK airport.
Shares in airlines have taken a battering as a result of the disease, with Wizz Air falling as much as 23 per cent over the last two weeks.
Yesterday two of the UK’s most prominent airline bosses warned that the worst was yet to come from the outbreak, with further fall in demand expected to materialise.
Speaking at an industry conference in Brussels, outgoing IAG boss Willie Walsh said that there had been “a very significant fall-off in demand” in Italian markets, while Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said he was expecting two to three weeks of a “very deflated booking environment”.
In this morning’s trading Wizz Air shares rose 1.5 per cent.