Wizz Air confirms Cardiff, UK base to open in late 2Q21

Wizz Air UK (W9, London Luton) has confirmed it will open its new base at Cardiff on June 17, 2021, with the first international flight taking off to Faro in Portugal, following the Welsh government’s lifting of a ban on international travel. The Hungarian low-cost carrier will station one aircraft, a 230-seat A321-200 at Cardiff, to start with, spokesperson Andras Rado confirmed. The intention was to grow the fleet at the base pending demand. The nine destinations to be served from Cardiff this summer include Faro (Portugal), Larnaca (Cyprus), Kerkyra (Greece), Heraklion (Crete), Alicante and Palma de Mallorca (Spain), plus Lanzarote and Tenerife Sur in the Canary Islands, Spain. This will be followed by flights to Sharm el Sheikh (Egypt) in October. Wizz Air UK Managing Director Owain Jones said in a statement: “With the re-start of international travel from Wales, we’re excited to be planning the start of Wizz Air UK’s new base at Cardiff Airport in June, just in time for the holiday season. We’ve been busy recruiting new colleagues, with the first training course in Cardiff already completed, and Wizz Air UK’s Cardiff team is looking forward to welcoming customers on-board Wales’ new hometown airline.” Jones told BBC Radio Wales the company had not taken any financial aid from the Welsh government and operated in Cardiff on a purely commercial basis. Wizz Air UK last December announced it was setting up a Cardiff base but was unable to start flights at Easter as it had hoped due to COVID-19 travel restrictions in the UK. Foreign travel from the UK is now permitted. Still, the rules applicable on return differ in terms of countries that have been classified into red, amber, and green destinations, depending on their COVID-19 status. Only green destinations allow a quarantine-free return to the UK. Portugal, including the Azores and Madeira, are on the current green list, while Spain and Greece are on the amber list. “We expect that over the year, as vaccinations programmes are rolled out, more countries will be on the green list,” Cardiff Airport Chief Executive Officer, Spencer Birns, told ch-aviation. “The situation is very fluid at the moment. Our expectations are that once countries are deemed to be safe for travel, demand will go through the roof.” Jones told BBC Radio Wales Wizz Air UK had been working “very closely” with authorities to avoid repeating the situation last year, which saw some last-minute changes to travel rules. “We know that people need reassurance if they’re going on holiday on a Saturday, that they wouldn’t then find out when they landed in Spain that all of a sudden from midnight [it] was coming off the travel corridor,” he said. “The traffic light system is certainly intended to provide more certainty.”