Wizz Air Abu Dhabi Shutting Down, Citing Heat In The Middle East

Real reason of shutting down: unable to save fifty pounds *puh person*, or 200 pounds for a family of 4

The interesting part of this is that Wizz plans on opening an Israeli subsidiary, so I’d have to imagine their concerns regarding regional instability are not entirely true.

To what extent, do you think, is the lower importance of credit card deals outside the US attributable to regulations limiting swipe fees? Presumably that would limit the amount of revenue that an EU airline would generate, no?

Honestly Lucky,

Ryanair isn’t actually very low cost these days on many routes, often even having a direct route and speed premium price over legacy carriers in basic economy with a stopover in their hub. As the provincial airports in European cities of half a million people tend to be much smaller this their American equivalents.

Perhaps they are reassigning those planes.

"...now we can go back to the full spirit of continuously exploiting the market."

Credit to this lad for having the stones to say what Ed Bastian of Delta means but won't say himself.

UAE carriers have fully utilised the bilateral rights with India and the latter has consistently refused to raise that number. So unless another airline was willing to give up some capacity for Wizz Air (unlikely given the demand), there was zero probability of tapping into the India market

Too bad. Although I’ve never flown with them at AUH, their route to MLE kept Etihads prices down as they had competition to the Maldives. You could fly Etihad for around $150 ow from AUH to MLE. With Wizz exiting the ME, I fully expect Etihad to now raise those prices to the same level as Emirates out of DXB now.

Sounds like the heat reason may be a polite way of not having to say they became frustrated with their JV partners, particularly re access to India.

They stopped flying to MLE a few months ago. Etihad's prices have skyrocketed and are now around $600-800 for a round trip in economy class to MLE.

That's a disgusting discrimination.

Wizz is strong in East Europe where structural hurdles persiste, notably the Russia/Belarus/Ukraine airspace and markets are closed to them. There would be demand however considering the proportion of russophones in East Europe.

The diversification to middle east was probably subsidized as a way to give an edge to Etihad in accessing secondary or tertiary indian cities. To Wizz, it was oversold based on wishful thinking on behalf of UAE authorities re Indian market access. The hot harsh environment is just an excuse to save face. Sure the HD 321s carry a little less pax per engine than an Emirates A380 and at lower yields. But that's not the point of the operation.
Abu Dhabi would have had a better chance of success if they had partnered with IndiGo. Indigo as well: Turkey is too far away.

Now what for Wizz? Even if they refocus on their traditional market they will stay hampered down by the Russo-Ukrainian war which limits their routings and market access, let alone access to cheap kerosene. I also assume the yields are lower in Eastern Europe as the mix is more heavily focused on VFR than Ryanair's western clientèle which is probably heavier on leisure and business.

Operationnally, Wizz are maxed out on efficiency with the 240 pax 321s while Ryanair still has the Max10s in the pocket. So they can't gain anymore on the fleet. Maybe they have some network optimizations beyond the ME pull out ? Not a big opportunity.

Honestly I don't see them recovering in any significant manner until they gain access to the currently closed airspace and markets in East Europe.