Wizz Air suffers 59% fall in September carryings

Wizz Air passenger numbers fell by almost 59% in September as the impact of Covid-19 continued to supress travel.

The Hungarian budget carrier saw carryings drop to 1.5 million from 3.8 million in the same month last year.

The load factor also declined, with a fall of almost 30 percentage points to 64.6% from 94.5% last September.

The airline’s rolling 12 month carryings were down 35% to 24.4 million. A total of 40 million passengers flew with the airline in the year to March before the pandemic shut down international travel.

The figures follow rival Ryanair blaming Covid-19 travel restrictions for a 64% year-on-year slump in September traffic.

Passenger carryings by Europe’s largest budget carrier fell to 5.1 million from more than 14 million in te same month in 2019.

Wizz Air continued to expand it fleet last month with the addition of two Airbus A320neos, bringing it fleet up to 132 aircraft.

The airline added: “Wizz Air continuously operates at the lowest CO₂ emissions per passenger/km amongst all competitor airlines, with 62.5 grams per passenger/km for the rolling 12 months to 30 September 2020.

“For the month of September, emissions in grams per passenger/km were 32.2% higher due to the drop in load factor, while total CO₂ emissions in tonnes decreased at a slightly higher rate than capacity.”