Wizz Air Expansion at London Gatwick

In December 2021, Wizz Air purchased 15 pairs of slots from Norwegian at London’s Gatwick Airport. The slot price was not revealed but was rumoured to be around £2m per slot pair. A slot pair consists of both a landing and a departure slot.

Norwegian was able to hold onto their slots, even though they were never likely to use them, due to the current slot waivers in place in the UK (and elsewhere) whereby the usual need to operate at least 80% of slots in order to gain historic rights for these slots, was removed for last summer. Wizz Air was keen to gain entry to Gatwick and Norwegian would have needed to either declare using the slots or sell them by 31 January 2022, in order for the slots to retain the historic rights.

Both Gatwick Airport and Wizz Air, were authors of a joint letter last year (along with Edinburgh and Belfast International airports) to the UK’s department of transport, asking for slot waivers to be removed and for slot rules to be returned to their pre-covid position, requiring 80% of slots to be flown in order for historic rights to be kept. Norwegian, by holding onto slots they were likely not going to use, were accused of blocking other carriers from gaining entry to Gatwick. This provided a difficult challenge for Gatwick as their revenues would be directly linked to the operation of these slots.

Wizz Air has been able to announce 14 new routes from Gatwick for Summer 2022 and they will be increasing their based aircraft from one to five. The new routes are as follows –

• Operated by Wizz Air UK:
  • London Gatwick-Catania: Three times weekly from 08-Apr-2022;
  • London Gatwick-Chania: Daily from 07-Apr-2022 for the summer season only;
  • London Gatwick-Faro: Daily from 27-Mar-2022
  • London Gatwick-Funchal: Twice weekly from 28-Mar-2022;
  • London Gatwick-Larnaca: Daily from 11-Apr-2022;
  • London Gatwick-Mykonos: Four times weekly from 12-Apr-2022 for the summer season only;
  • London Gatwick-Palma de Mallorca: Daily from 27-Mar-2022;
  • London Gatwick-Podgorica: Four times weekly from 07-Apr-2022;
  • London Gatwick-Tel Aviv: Daily from 27-Mar-2022;
• Operated by Wizz Air Hungary:
  • Bari-London Gatwick: Twice weekly from 29-Mar-2022;
  • Milan-London Gatwick: Daily from 27-Mar-2022;
  • Naples-London Gatwick: Four times weekly from 27-Mar-2022;
  • Rome-London Gatwick: Daily from 27-Mar-2022;
  • Vienna-London Gatwick: Daily from 27-Mar-2022.

Good news then for Wizz Air but equally good news for Gatwick. Based on Wizz Air’s pre-covid load factors and aircraft utilisation rates, it is likely that the new services would generate 3.2 million additional passengers annually. Of course, some of the services announced will be summer only but they are likely to be replaced by winter destinations, allowing Wizz Air to keep their slots on a year-round basis.

Source: BL Aviation Consulting

The extra movements and passengers will feed through into Gatwick’s aeronautical revenues and the extra passengers will help generate significant non-aero revenues through passengers using Gatwick’s shops and food and beverage outlets.

easyJet and British Airway’s new BA Euroflyer may be the potential losers from Wizz Air’s LGW expansion and it will be interesting to see how this story develops going forward.