Central and Eastern European low-cost airline specialist has reinforced its commitment in the Polish market with the announcement that it will open a sixth base in the country, its 21st across Europe, at the relatively new Lublin Airport. The carrier will base a single Airbus A320 at the facility, close to the town of Świdnik, having served the Greenfield airport since it opened for commercial operations in December 2012.
The stationed aircraft will enable the carrier to boost its international network and will result in a 115 per cent rise in annual seat capacity from the airport. New routes to Brussels Charleroi (twice weekly), Doncaster Sheffield (three times weekly) and Glasgow (twice weekly) will commence from September 14, 2015, while frequencies on existing routes to London Luton (from five to seven times weekly from September 15, 2015) and Oslo Torp (from three to four times weekly from December 21, 2015) will also be increased. Wizz Air will also serve Stockholm-Skavsta from Lublin from May 21, 2015.
The airline believes this will stimulate the local job market in aviation and tourism sectors as consumers will have access to more low cost routes and will support a wider expansion of Polish regional services with a new direct twice weekly link between Wroclaw and Stockholm Skavsta to be introduced from September 15, 2015, while the existing twice weekly Poznan - Milan Bergamo will switch from seasonal to year-round operation from the same date.
Wizz Air first launched operations in Poland in 2004 and has subsequently built up a strong presence in the country over the subsequent eleven years. As a result of these additions it will now offer a total of 113 Polish routes to 20 countries from seven Polish airports.
“We put Lublin on the map of aviation in 2012 and it will now become the 6th Polish airport where we establish base operations. The new base will create a number of local jobs with Wizz Air and our local business partners while allowing us to bring more low fare routes to Poland,” said György Abrán, chief commercial officer, Wizz Air.
“Developing and adding regional airports to our network, we have constantly expanded our operations in Poland and today’s announcement once again underlines our commitment to the country,” he added.
In our analysis we look at the airline’s growth in Poland by departure airport. From offering around 875,000 annual departure seats from four locations in Poland in 2005, the carrier has more than trebled its offering with over 2.7 million seats available from Poland in 2014, a figure that will rise to more than 3.3 million this year based on already published flight schedules.
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