Growing Wizz Air delivers record annual revenue
Fast-growing European airline Wizz Air, which operates flights from Birmingham Airport, carried 51 million passengers in the year to the end of March.
It was up 88.3 per cent from 27.1m in 2021-2022 with revenue rising 134.2 per cent to a record £3.34 billion
Earnings before tax were £115.4 million from a £20m loss a year earlier.
The Wizz Air fleet of aircraft increased from 153 to 179 over the year.
The airline is set to deliver record summer traffic this year.
Jozsef Varadi, Wizz Air group chief executive, said it had been a year of significant growth for the business as it transitioned into the post-Covid era.
"The effects of fuel price increases and structural capacity issues at airports remained features throughout the year, but we are mitigating these through decisive actions which helped to improve ex-fuel cost performance," he said.
Its strategy of driving profitable growth across its core central Europe network, Western Europe and the Middle East has helped deliver a company record revenue which was a 41 per cent increase on pre-Covid levels in 2019-2020.
"As we look ahead, we are optimistic for the current financial year and our focus continues to be on returning to net profit in 2023-2024. This will be driven by low cost, operational excellence, including continued high aircraft utilization, productivity improvements and increased flight completion factors.
"We are confident in delivering this having spent much of the last year building an even better and operationally more resilient business, investing in our people, operations, and network," added Mr Varadi.
In the current financial year Wizz Air employment is expected to top 8,000 and its fleet increase to 200 aircraft.
