Interesting news today, with regards to an order for the newly launched A321XLR...
Forbes - Airbus' New A321XLR Plane Gets Big Boost From Indigo Partners
One of Wizzair's major shareholders, Indigo Partners (who also has major stakes in JetSmart and Frontier Airlines), placed an order for 50 of this new longer range aircraft today. 18 were converted from an existing A321neo order and a further 32 are new additional aircraft.
Of these 50 aircraft, 20 are going to Wizzair, 18 to Frontier and 12 to Jetsmart!
It will be interesting to see how Wizzair are looking to utilise these new longer range aircraft? Even though the new A321neo's that have now started to arrive do have the range to fly routes like London-Luton to New York, they have previously made it clear they have no interest in launching such routes or similar routes of this length!
Is this now a change in strategy for the airline, and looking to go into operating routes of 7+ hours? It would seem a bit of a waste of an aircraft to operate this type if they were not planning to do so. In the Airbus marketing material it states routes like New York to Rome and Miami to London are capable with the aircraft, not sure how this compares to routes from their central European bases like Warsaw or Budapest to New York or other US destinations.
Wizz Air are very much a bare bones ultra low cost carrier, so if they are going to operate longer routes, I hope they install some additional creature comforts! Their existing slimline seats make your bum go numb after few hours and anything longer than that is a struggle with their tight leg room and dense configuration! 230 passengers packed into one of these aircraft for 7+ hours will not be a lot of fun.