Wizz Air (W6, Budapest) will open its first Austrian base at Vienna on June 14, 2018, and will launch a total of seventeen new routes out of the Austrian gateway during the course of 2018.
The Hungarian LCC will initially base one A320 out of Vienna and add two further A321s in November. Wizz Air currently does not operate to Austria, which will become the forty-fourth country served by the airline.
Before the opening of the base, the carrier plans to launch services to Vienna out of Gdansk (4x weekly from April 27), Tuzla International (3x weekly from April 27), and Varna (2x weekly from April 28). Upon the launch of the base in mid-June, Wizz Air will add services to Bari (4x weekly), Malta International (initially 3x weekly, 4x weekly from November), Rome Fiumicino (7x weekly), Tel Aviv Ben Gurion (initially 4x weekly, 7x weekly from November), and Valencia Manises (initially 3x weekly, 4x weekly from November).
In November, the carrier will launch routes of the Austrian capital to Bergen (4x weekly), Billund (4x weekly), Dortmund (7x weekly), Kutaisi (3x weekly), Larnaca (4x weekly), Nis (3x weekly), Ohrid (3x weekly), Tenerife Sur (3x weekly), and Thessaloniki (3x weekly).
Since its inception, Wizz Air has mostly concentrated on routes connecting Eastern and Western Europe but recently started to diversify its network. It has established a base at London Luton, out of which it plans to launch services to Bari, Athens, and Reykjavik Keflavik in April 2018. Vienna will become its first base in continental Western Europe.
According to the ch-aviation capacity module, Vienna is dominated by Lufthansa Group subsidiaries with Austrian Airlines, Eurowings, and Lufthansa being the three largest carriers by capacity with a joint market share of 62.2%. IAG International Airlines Group plans to convert the currently grounded Niki (Austria) into a Spanish unit of its LCC subsidiary, Vueling Airlines, pending court approval of the takeover.
