Wizz Air suspends all its flights from Cardiff Airport

Budget airline Wizz Air yesterday confirmed that it would close its Cardiff base permanently on Wednesday, 25 January. This means that all operations at the airport will be ceased.

Wizz is a Hungarian business, and is centred around straightforward travel available to absolutely everyone at the lowest price possible.

Back in August last year, the airline announced it would only temporarily suspend most of its operations at Cardiff Airport during the winter period, with flights only heading out to Milan and Bucharest.

The airport is located in Rhoose, Barry and is the only international airport in Wales, seeing over 1.6 million people through its doors each year.

In March 2013, Cardiff Airport was bought by the Welsh Government. Since then, it has continued to operate as a limited company and has undergone a number of changes and improvements to enhance the customer journey. These improvements include welcoming new airlines, increasing route availability, improving the car park infrastructure and opening a new landside cafe.

Upon the decision, Managing Director of Wizz Air, Marion Geoffrey said:

“The challenging macro-economic environment and high operational costs including fuel mean that unfortunately we are unable to continue operating from Cardiff Airport.

"We sincerely apologise to our customers in Wales and the south-west of England for the disruption and inconvenience that this will cause.

"Our priority now is to ensure that all affected customers are contacted directly with clear advice on their options, and to look after our Cardiff based colleagues and crew."

The Wizz base in Cardiff opened back in December 2020, when it planned to offer an annual capacity of more than 350,000 seats.

However, in the early part of last year, the airline reported mounting losses of around £381 million, blaming it on the impact of fuel costs and airport disruption.

During this time, it said that the forever-evolving demand and ticket prices should ensure a "substantial operating profit" for the rest of the year.

Cardiff Airport - Credit: Visit Cardiff

In response to the recent news, Cardiff Airport said:

"Our thoughts are with our customers who are impacted by this news and now face disruption to their travel plans for this year, along with our friends and colleagues that are employed by Wizz Air based at Cardiff.

"There has been positive booking trends and very strong passenger demand to travel from Cardiff in 2022 and current booking trends for 2023 remains similar. We have been working closely with the airline since 2020 and their latest indications to us last week, were that bookings for this summer are ahead of this time last year, so we see their decision as surprising.

"Our thoughts are with our customers who are impacted by this news and now face disruption to their travel plans for this year, along with our friends and colleagues that are employed by Wizz Air based at Cardiff.

"Four of our existing airlines are still planning operations from Cardiff to all the destinations that Wizz were selling tickets to. We encourage those customers who had booked on Wizz this year, to consider an alternative choice to fly to their chosen destinations from Cardiff with TUI, Vueling Ryanair and KLM."

Cardiff isn't the only airport to have has to deal with a major blow from Wizz Air. Not long ago in June 2022, the carrier pulled out of Doncaster Sheffield airport.

Customers will now be contacted via email and can pick between a 120% refund of the original fare in airline credit, a 100% cash refund or an alternative flight via the one of the following airports:

• Gatwick
• Leeds
• Birmingham
• Bristol
• Luton
• Liverpool

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