Wizzair - aircraft parked up in Budapest - why?

[eoinok]

Hi Folks,
I flew out of Budapest today and was surprised to see three wizzair aircraft parked up over by the cargo terminal.

I flew in Saturday night and there was two of them parked up.

I was originally supposed to fly with them. The have *3 daily out of Luton. I was planing to fly on the middle one but got a mail to say that it was cancelled (and subsequently a phone call). I was offered a seat on either the earlier leg or the later leg. I declined the offer and went for a refund as the flight times didn't suit. I chose to fly with EZY then.
One can imagine the wisdom of my decision when waiting in Luton for my EZY flight and I spotted that the later flight which I was going to take had also being canceled......................

My question is what's going on there? I realise that they are a start up and would love to see them succed as we need more LCC to eastern Europe! I am not trying to knock the airline and I know it has ben discussed here before but it seems they need to get their act together. Their advertising is minimal and cancelling flights like this is only going to hiss people off even if the planes are flying virtually empty. You need to try and build up a base?

[Powerjet1]

They seem to have cut the early & midday flights from Budapest to Luton on Tues & Wed. Warsaw, Gdansk and Katowice are similarly affected. No Gdansk flight at all on Tues. Mon & Fri are the only days when there are 3 flights BUD-LTN, although that can often change at the last minute. This really started at the beginning of the month with the change to the winter timetable.

There certainly does seem to be over capacity now on both the BUD & WAW legs to London. I think with just LTN & STN there are between 10/12 daily departures from these destinations, not counting LGW & LHR.

Wizz may just be responding to the market or perhaps they have other reasons. Who knows?. On 1 Nov, easy went twice daily LTN-BUD and started twice daily LTN-WAW. Coincidence ?

[LTNman]

What their timetable says and what you can now actually book are two different things

[eoinok]

I know what you are saying Powerjet1 but I must also agree with LTNman!

FLight cancelation wasn't anything to do with timetable resceduling. My initial flight was, but the later one that I also spotted that had been canceled.

With so many airlines, and from what I gather they are right, obsessed with keeping their aircraft in the air and less time on the ground as they do not make any money when on the ground, it cant be good to have 1/2 your fleet (3) of brand new airbus A320's parked up for a day? No money been made that way :)

They really do need to start advertising. Even over here in Ireland I have not seen one single advert for them. With FR doing so many flights ex Dub to LTN, people might be interested in "connecting" with them.......

In my particular case, I had to go ex Cork to STN, bus to LTN and LTN to BUD!! Same routing on the way back........ :(

Trying to fly direct to BUD ex DUB is simply daylight robbery. I have ever succeded in getting a quote for under €500. On this trip, whole lot including bus tranfers etc set me back €170. I realise that time is wasted, could even be a whole day traveling to get this saving but if it is your own cash, you wouldn't mind :)

The above might be slightly off subject anyway...........

Here is hoping that what I have obseved in the last few weeks is only a temporary teething glitch for Wizz......

[Powerjet1]

eoinok

You certainly had a roundabout trip but as you say, you saved a fair bit on the nearest alternative. Perhaps ryan will start a ORK-LTN sometime(I know it has been rumoured) making a similar trip easier.

The Wizz timetable has not altered since mid September but the actual flights have. Cutting flights at short notice creates a very bad impression for the customer, and if the reason is due to poor loads on those particular flights, they should cut them completely and revamp the schedule to suit the market they are serving. I have a flight with Wizz, LTN-BUD-LTN in early December and the outbound has already been cancelled by them and I am now booked on a later flight. Makes me very wary. Unfortunately, flights on the dates in question with easy are now way over £170 return, Paid Wizz £44.

[kriskross]

Maybe you have answered your own question, Powerjet. If the EZY prices are high then the load should be good, based on the yield management programme that governs the pricing.

Perhaps, if WIZZ are offering lower prices, then either the load is not so good or they are offering a 'special', either way it would appear that EZY don't feel the need to respond!!

[Powerjet1]

True. In fairness, I did book the Wizz flights about 4/5 weeks ago to get that price. They are currently offering the same flights at £95.00, which is almost half the price of easy. Having said that, a general view of various dates up to mid-december, the price difference is much smaller, with easy sometimes being a bit cheaper, but generally it comes out in favour of Wizz. So why are they not filling more seats?. One answer, in the UK, virtually no advertising.

I've flown Wizz three times in as many months and was generally quite impressed, but the loads varied considerably, I would hazard a guess at worse 40%, at best 65/70%. Certainly it would seem to indicate that easy are taking the lead. As easy have now started Warsaw and Krakow(Katowice for Wizz) from November, life for Wizz, at least at Luton, is not likely to became any easier.

[Scottie]

I was bored a couple of weeks ago so counted the pax coming off a Wizzair at LTN recently, 24.

On an A320 that must work out about a 15% load factor?

[Powerjet1]

Scottie

24 pax, that bad. Says it all really, doesn't it.