Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air (W6, Budapest) is to station an A320 in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, from May 20, 2021, representing the opening of its 41st base as the airline continues to expand its operations despite COVID-19 travel restrictions.
Wizz Air in a statement announced it intends to open nine new routes from Sarajevo, in addition to its existing connection to Budapest. The airline will commence:
- 3x weekly flights to Copenhagen Kastrup, Dortmund, and Basel/Mulhouse/Freiburg, CH;
- 2x weekly rotations to Brussels Charleroi, Memmingen, London Luton, Paris Beauvais, Eindhoven, and Gothenburg Landvetter.
All of the new routes are currently unserved from Sarajevo and will significantly improve the city's connectivity. In total, Wizz Air will add 250,000 more seats to Sarajevo this year, the airline said.
Sarajevo Airport will be Wizz Air’s second base in Bosnia and Herzegovina after launching flights from Tuzla International in 2013.
The expansion follows a tender launched by Sarajevo Airport last year to incentivise carriers to base themselves there in 2021. According to reports, the budget carrier was the only one to have responded to the tender. It would be incentivised to station its aircraft at the airport, as well as for the number of passengers brought to the city. Wizz Air would also have the option of growing its fleet at Sarajevo.
Most markets selected by Wizz Air from Sarajevo are driven by VFR (Visiting Friends and Relatives) traffic. “It is well known that an airline opening a base at an airport creates preconditions for an increase in traffic volume (a larger number of flights and a significantly greater number of passengers, as well as the launch of new routes). All of this is very important, not just for Sarajevo Airport but for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s entire tourism sector and other subjects whose livelihoods and recovery largely depend on the resumption of flights to our country," commented Sarajevo Airport's General Manager, Alan Bajić.
Wizz Air is the largest low-cost airline group in Central and Eastern Europe and operates a modern fleet of 120 Airbus aircraft, with another 252 A320neo family aircraft on order. Its existing fleet includes sixty-five A320-200s, six A320-200N; thirty-four A321-200s; fourteen A321-200NX; and one A330-200F. The 252 aircraft on order include thirty-four A320-200N; 198 A321-200NXs; and twenty A321-200NY(XLR)s, according to the ch-aviation fleets module.
