Wizz Air is to establish a base at Luton airport by deploying more than 6.3 million seats this year.
The eastern and central European budget carrier is adding three new routes from the Bedfordshire airport, increasing seat capacity by 13% over 2016.
The airline will start serving Tel Aviv, the Kosovan capital of Prishtina and Kutaisi in Georgia from June.
Frequencies on popular routes to Romania will also increase with the arrival of the new aircraft. Suceava will be served five times a week, Constanta four times a week and Iasi on a daily basis.
The summer expansion will see number of routes being served from the airport rise to 42. The creation of the airline’s 28th base at Luton will see 36 jobs being created.
Wizz Air carried more than five million passengers from Luton last year. Chief executie József Váradi said: “Today’s announcement once again underlines Wizz Air’s commitment to the UK.
“Our first Wizz Air flight from the UK took off from London Luton in 2004 and since then, we have carried over 35 million passengers on our low-fare UK routes.
“Wizz is bringing direct connections and the lowest-fare opportunities to our customers in the UK to explore everything that the Central and Eastern European region has to offer, whether visiting their friends and family, taking city breaks, exploring undiscovered countryside or sophisticated sea and ski resorts.
“By establishing base operations at London Luton, where Wizz is already the second largest operator and an important supporter of local jobs with our business partners, we are also creating direct local jobs with one of Europe’s fastest-growing airlines for the first time.”
Hmmm 4 airlines flying Luton to Tel Aviv. For some airlines it will all end in tears. Copenhagen mark 2 comes to mind but who will cave in first?
With Wizz creating a Luton base and flying to a non Eastern European airport this could open a whole new can of worms for easyjet. Could we ever see a day when Wizz fly a UK domestic route as they look at a post Brexit Britain? Actually they have had a Luton base for a few years now but have never announced it.
So in a couple of days we have had an Easyjet announcement about Luton so I wonder about their commitment to Stansted and now Wizz. Anything else to come I wonder? I can't see Ryanair doing anything big at Luton as they are wedded to STN unless they pick off easyjet routes before heading back to their Essex country retreat.