Business | Rising in the east

Can Wizz Air soar amid the pandemic?

The Hungarian low-cost carrier looks better placed than rivals to thrive

Sep 3rd 2020

THE MOOD among airline bosses can seem uniformly bleak. For good reason: air travel may not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024. Not a week goes by without an airline sacking thousands of workers. Against this gloom, Jozsef Varadi, who runs Wizz Air, cuts an audacious figure. While other airlines cancel and defer orders for new planes and put expansion plans on ice, he wants to increase his fleet from 127 planes to 160 by 2022 and double passenger numbers to 80m by 2025. He believes the Hungarian low-cost carrier, founded 17 years ago and now Europe’s third-biggest behind Ryanair and EasyJet, will not only survive covid-19 but thrive.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Rising in the east”