Originally Posted by
gdiddy
I don't think Wizz will be giving up any slots at LTN, people need to remember many of the routes that have moved to Gatwick, were routes that have only recently started at LTN during the Pandemic from March 2020 onwards...
Many of the routes Wizz flew before March 2020 were to cities like Warsaw, Katowice, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, etc which were operating with frequencies of around 3-4 return flights a day. Right now (and earlier on in the pandemic), many of these routes were reduced to one or two frequencies a day to reflect the demand of travel during these difficult times. Therefore operating reduced schedules to these cities and many others, freed up Wizz's slots to fly to Mediterranean destinations.
Now Wizz, is optimistically looking to ramp up the schedules to the above mentioned cities for summer 2022, back to pre-pandemic frequencies. Therefore some routes had to give and this is where the Gatwick slots came in and Wizz cherry picked which ones it wants to operate from there,
While the number of destinations is not as great, I suspect the actual number of aircraft movements and seats available for sale remains very similar.
gdiddy, I agree with you. It should be remembered that to increase/maintain passenger levels Wizz increased destinations, and took into account the ever-evolving shut downs in individual countries. With regards to transferring some flights to LGW it should be noted that they will be heavily competing with the already established airlines operating many duplicated routes. There is high demand for more slots at LTN whilst LGW May never recover its glory days prior to the pandemic. Time will tell.