Wizz Air terminates four Belgrade routes

Wizz Air is continuing to downsize its operations across the former Yugoslavia with the budget carrier to terminate a select number of routes from its Belgrade base. The airline, which had earmarked flights to Vaxjo, Sandefjord and Billund for suspension over the winter months has now decided to terminate the routes for good. The trio of destinations are no longer planned to return to the network during the 2023 summer season. Furthermore, the carrier does not intend on restoring operations from the Serbian capital to Santorni, which has been maintained on a seasonal summer basis since last year. Wizz will continue to operate flights between Serbia and Greece through Heraklion.

The budget airline launched services from Belgrade to Sandefjord near Oslo during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in July 2020. At the same time, Air Serbia responded with the introduction of flights to Norway’s capital. Since then, Norwegian Air Shuttle has also restored operations between Oslo and Belgrade. Air Serbia has been successful on the route, which it launched with two weekly frequencies. This summer, it ran up to five weekly rotations between the two cities. Wizz Air’s service to Vaxjo in Sweden was introduced in December of last year, following several delays. It will continue to maintain operations to Skavsta, Gothenburg and Malmo in Sweden. Billund was also added to the carrier’s Belgrade network as part of its expansion last December.

Wizz Air reported a net loss of 450 million euros for the first quarter of the 2023 fiscal year owing to "a challenging macro and operational backdrop". The carrier estimated that due to higher operating costs, which are related to capacity reallocation stemming from the war in Ukraine, it also experienced an operating loss of 285 million euros. "We've been continuing to push on a balance between yield and load factor to make sure we're getting the most we can - we've got to cover the fuel costs. When we're thinking about our network planning, we have to be a little bit more focused on expanding what we know already works as opposed to going into too many new exploratory things", Wizz Air’s President, Robert Carey, said during the World Aviation Festival in Amsterdam last week.

EX-YU Aviation News

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