Wizz Air takes battle to Ryanair with August traffic surge

Wizz Air Holdings Plc has narrowed the gap with much larger Ryanair Holdings Plc during the coronavirus crisis, based on traffic figures for August, the peak month for summer tourist travel.

Wizz carried almost one-third as many passengers as Ryanair last month, after expanding in markets such as Italy and Germany, according to traffic updates issued Thursday. In August 2019, the Budapest-based airline was about a quarter the size of Europe’s dominant low-cost carrier.

While Wizz’s passenger tally is back at 90% of pre-coronavirus levels, Ryanair is carrying only around three-quarters of the people it did before Covid-19 struck. The Irish company has been partly held back by a stuttering restart in the U.K., its biggest market, where constantly changing rules and pricey testing requirements continue to put some people off flying.

Even so, Ryanair has restored a much greater proportion of its schedule than major network carriers Air France-KLM, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and British Airways owner IAG SA.

EasyJet Plc, Europe’s second-biggest low-cost airline, has also been hobbled by its reliance on the U.K. It no longer publishes monthly passenger figures but said on July 20 that capacity this quarter would reach no more than 60% of 2019 levels. 

Wizz is already offering more seats than it did before the pandemic and Ryanair close to 90%.