Wizz Air Opens New Bases In Milan, Larnaca, Salzburg and Tirana

Wizz Air has announced a dramatic flight expansion as it is set to open new bases in Milan, Larnaca, Salzburg and Tirana while adding new routes from London.

New bases

Wizz Air has come with quite a few announcements in the last days. It seems that with every new day, the Hungarian low-cost airline is announcing the opening of yet another base in Europe.

Today the airline came with the news that it would open two new bases, one in Salzburg (SZG) and one in Tirana (TIA).

Salzburg

From its new Salzburg base, Wizz will fly to the following destinations:

– Belgrade (BEG), Serbia
– Bucharest (OTP), Romania
– Kiev Zhulyany (IEV), Ukraine
– Larnaca (LCA), Cyprus
– Skopje (SKP), North Macedonia
– Tuzla (TZL), Bosnia and Herzegovina

This is an exciting possibility for people in the above countries to visit the lovely city of Salzburg, which is famous for its historic inner city, Mozart and the Sound of Music. It also creates great new travel opportunities for those in Northern Austria and Bavaria.

Tirana

The largest expansion of the Wizz Air network will happen at Tirana Airport (TIA) in Albania. Although Wizz already operated flights to and from Albania’s capital, it will now open a hub in this city. This allows the low-cost airline to operate a whopping 16 new routes from Tirana, which will connect the city with:

– Bari (BRI), Italy
– Basel-Mulhouse (EAP), Switzerland-France
– Berlin Schoenefeld (SXF), Germany
– Brussels Charleroi (CRL), Belgium
– Catania (CTA), Italy
– Eindhoven (EIN), the Netherlands
– Frankfurt Hahn (HHN), Germany
– Hamburg (HAM), Germany
– Heraklion (HER), Greece
– Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden (FKB), Germany
– Milan Bergamo (BGY), Italy
– Milan Malpensa (MXP), Italy
– Paris Beauvais (BVA), France
– Prague (PRG), Czech Republic
– Rhodes (RHO), Greece
– Turin (TRN), Italy

Previously, the airline already announced new routes from Tirana to other Italian cities such as Bologna (BLQ), Pisa (PSA), Verona (VRN) and Venice-Treviso (TSF). This means a massive flight expansion from Albania, which is great news for Albanians and foreign tourists wishing to explore this relatively unknown but gorgeous country (I can highly recommend it from my own experience travelling there!).

Larnaca

Wizz Air will also set up a base in Larnaca on the island of Cyprus. The airline already, which already operated some routes from the country’s largest airport, announced yesterday that it would add a whopping 11 new routes. These routes will connect Larnaca Airport (LCA) to:

– Athens (ATH), Greece
– Billund (BLL), Denmark
– Copenhagen (CPH), Denmark
– Dortmund (DTM), Germany
– Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden (FKB), Germany
– Memmingen (FMM), Germany
– Salzburg (SZG), Austria
– Suceava (SCV), Romania
– Thessaloniki (SKG), Greece
– Turku (TKU), Finland
– Wroclaw (WRO), Poland

Naturally, this is exciting news for holidaymakers in Denmark, Germany, Romania, Finland and Poland who want to visit Cyprus. More intriguing are however the new flights between Cyprus and Greece.

Given the close ties between the two nations, these will no doubt become popular routes and create a price war, as Aegean Airlines, Blue Air and Cyprus Airways already operate flights between Larnaca and Greek airports.

Milan Malpensa

Another airport where Wizz Air will open a hub is Milan’s biggest airport: Milan Malpensa (MXP). Even though also at this airport Wizz Air is certainly no stranger as it already operates plenty of flights to Central and Eastern European countries, it now mostly announced new flights catering to Italian holidaymakers.

In total a whopping 21 new routes were announced linking Milan with:

– Athens (ATH), Greece
– Corfu (CFU), Greece
– Eindhoven (EIN), the Netherlands
– Fuerteventura (FUE), Spain
– Gran Canaria (LPA), Spain
– Ibiza (IBZ), Spain
– Lisbon (LIS), Portugal
– London Luton (LTN), United Kingdom
– Marrakech (RAK), Morocco
– Menorca (MAH), Spain
– Porto (OPO), Portugal
– Prishtina (PRN), Kosovo
– Reykjavik (KEF), Iceland
– Rhodes (RHO), Greece
– Santorini (JTR), Greece
– Tallinn (TLL), Estonia
– Tel Aviv (TLV), Israel
– Tenerife South (TFS), Spain
– Thessaloniki (SKG), Greece
– Valencia (VLC), Spain
– Zakynthos (ZTH), Greece

New London Luton flights

Besides the new hubs at Larnaca, Milan Malpensa, Salzburg and Tirana, Wizz Air also announced some new routes from its London Luton base to Spain. This coincides with talks between the Spanish and British governments to create air corridors to shuttle tourists from the UK to Spanish tourist destinations.

The new flights will link London Luton with:

– Fuerteventura (FUE)
– Lanzarote (ACE)
– Malaga (AGP), Spain
– Milan Malpensa (MXP), Italy
– Palma de Mallorca (PMI), Spain

Corona

Wizz Air has not been as much impacted by the corona virus (COVID-19) as most of its competitors. CEO  Jozsef Varadi even said that the Hungarian low-cost airline has cash reserves of around 1.5 billion euro.

He said that even if the company would not operate a single flight for the next three years, it would still have enough cash at hand. Varadi already hinted that the cash could be used to fund new operations to strike a blow against its competitors.

Varadi said: “It [the cash reserve] makes us more resilient in times of crisis or even in a weaker economic environment. On the other hand, we can act immediately if a strategic opportunity opens up.”

Abu Dhabi

The low-cost airline already announced earlier this month that its new base in Abu Dhabi would see its first flights in June.

From Abu Dhabi, Wizz Air will start operations to Bucharest (OTP), Budapest (BUD), Cluj-Napoca (CLJ), Katowice (KTW) and Sofia (SOF).

In short

Wizz Air is not sitting idle during the corona crisis as it has announced some drastic expansion plans. With four new bases in Larnaca, Milan (Malpensa), Salzburg and Tirana, as well as dozens of newly announced routes, the airline clearly shows its ambition.

Although some of these routes such as those between London and the Canary Islands are clearly meant as ad-hoc flights for this atypical summer holiday season in which many tourists face lockdowns and closed borders, the newly opened bases do show the intention of Wizz Air in a post-COVID19 world.

Wizz Air’s CEO Jozsef Varadi already told before that the airline has plenty of cash reserves to withstand the crisis and that it would actively seek new opportunities, especially in areas where its direct competitors face difficulties and leave a void for Wizz Air to step in.

It will be interesting to see how Wizz Air will perform over the next years as we may well see the airline becoming Europe’s largest if it keeps expanding like this.

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