Wizzair not yet out of the picture, seeing some competition coming its way
Remember how I repeatedly told you about the mysteries of Wizzair. how the airline, followed a very “pure player” developmental model, but was plagued with shady communication, inexistant traffic figures and financial difficulties? Well, I must admit, in spite of my pessimistic outlook on the airline two years ago, it’s still around. Not to say that it’s been madly growing either – we would probably know otherwise – but it has managed to keep a steady increase in passenger figures.
One thing may have served the airline, while it’s certainly not the only low-cost in the European skies, it has made a speciality of focusing on Eastern European countries. Where most other low-costs have preferred to focus on richer western european countries, at the risk of exposing themselves to intense competition, Wizzair’s choice has left it in a rather protected environment. Something which may explain the company surviving its own shortcomings since 2009.
That situation may be about to change as more western low-cost carriers are heading east. And I’m not talking about the small ones either, when Wizzair opened its 14th base at Vilnius in mid-April 2011, it was clearly coming on Ryanair’s territory. Or at least that’s what Ryanair must have thought. The Irish low-cost, which had been operating from Kaunas for quite some time announced it would launch services from Vilnius starting from the beginning of May.
It’s a testament to the potential strength of Wizzair’s offering that Ryanair is actually making an effort to block the company. Until now it had made no particular move towards ousting local regional carrier airBaltic – which eventually ousted itself when it saw that both Wizzair and Ryanair would be serving Lithuania. It may also that Ryanair knows it has the opportunity to completely absorb Wizzair’s potential costumers at the base and that the situation would provide a low cost opportunity to deal a damaging blow to its eastern-european rival. The future only will tell whether Wizzair’s back is strong enough to take an actual hit.
Well, for the time, load factors are as following: “Wizz” – 80%, “Ryanair” – 65%. So locals vote for Wizz even despite the great Ryanair awareness.
Also Irish airline (unlike in UK and other western countries) is treated like a bless rather that a curse. But still, people prefer Wizz….
People welcoming Ryanair would make sense here. But I should have been more precise (although it’s in the links provided in the articles): Ryanair still has way fewer routes departing from Vilnius than Wizzair.
Considering the fact that both companies have a very similar price policy, it’s not so surprising that Wizzair is actually succeeding. All I was saying is that Ryanair is acting like it worries about Wizzair’s presence. And the Irish low-cost has enough leverage to cause Wizzair some troubles.
Other than that, do you have a reliable source with Wizzair’s load factors? I’d be interested in reading more about this…
Yes probably Ryanair is worried about Wizzair presence, because not only they started operation in Vilnius, but also duplicated most of the routes here. Ryanair expecting to steal some passengers from Wizzair and not letting make too much profit from Vilnius base. They are using their size to prevent competition from growing. As a customer, if price is similar, I prefer Wizz – I like their planes, crew and website better, also Rome and Barcelona routes fly to main airports which is also a plus. Probably Ryanair sees something in them that makes them take Wizzair seriously…
Definitely. I’m fairly confident Ryanair sees in Wizzair a potentially serious rival. As of now both are almost the only pure players on the market (easyJet, Vueling, Air Berlin and Transavia offer better service and generally higher prices). Moreover, Wizzair is slowling trusting the growing east European market. The company could build up enough momentum to eventually come harass Ryanair on the Western European market.
Just today they also announced route from Kaunas to Eindhoven (looks like even same days as Wizz flight from Vilnius)… Thats getting dirty
I hope Wizz will hold their own. The problem is if they cancel route there will be people that already got tickets and then a lot of problems, and it looks like Wizzair is not very good at handling this, so they will have a lot of bad publicity… They should plan ahead and cancel route early if they want to avoid direct competition yet (they also have Dortmund route which is close i think).
IMO in Lithuania Wizzair should position themselves more or less like a normal airline, just without first class and with very very good prices. They fly to some better airports, and they should continue doing that, so some business passengers can be won over. Routes to other capitals like Paris or Madrid to better airports could be good bet. Also to Norway, Denmark – since some emigrants live there – however thats where Ryanair can step in and Wizz could not avoid direct competition…
Thanks for the tip.
You have a good analysis. However, I still think WizzAir has the upper hand there as they fly from Vilnius rather than Kaunas. Sure, Ryanair’s definitely trying to increase pressure here, but airports do matter and I believe Vilnius to be more attractive than Kaunas for potential passengers. In the end, you’re right, the risk is that Ryanair starts improving connections with other large European cities and progressively takes over the tourist market in Lithuania.
But I’m pretty sure WizzAir won’t back down so easily…
It seems Wizzair doing just that, they have announced for end of May Vilnius-Bergen, Vilnius-Oslo (Norway – there are quite few emigrants there), also Vilnius-Paris (its Beauvais airport, it seems they have tried to bargain with Orly, but they were a bit too expensive… Ryanair has Kaunas Paris, so it seems Wizzair is not afraid of that. There are no other routes from Vilnius to Paris), and another new route Vilnius-Liverpool which is also mostly for emigrants. Besides they increase frequency of other flights (e.g Vilnius-London from 5 times per week to 11). It seems they will base another aircraft in Vilnius and they still have some free capacity. It looks like its going pretty well for Wizzair here despite Ryanair trying to confront them directly. I think they also follow closely whats happening with Airbaltic. If they go bankrupt – thats pretty good opportunity for Wizzair to expand even more