Europe’s unluckiest airline wisely clips its wings

Wizz Air Holdings

22/09/2026 10:55

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
By Oliver Taslic
LONDON, Sept 22 (Reuters Breakingviews) - It’s hard to find a major European airline that’s had a worse run of luck than Wizz Air WIZZ.L. In the late 2010s, the carrier was trading at over £30 a share and enjoyed mid-teens operating margins. Then came a succession of headwinds that have knocked the stock by over two-thirds and left Wizz staring at an operating loss this year. The group’s latest strategy, which substantially clips its wings compared to previous lofty plans, is reassuringly grounded.
Like all carriers, Wizz suffered during Covid-19. But it was also big in Ukraine before the Russian invasion, big in Israel before the 2023 attacks, and – most damagingly – a major user of Pratt & Whitney GTF engines that required widespread inspections and groundings due to a manufacturing issue. In the year to March 2019, Wizz reported operating profit of €300 million and 20% top-line growth. In the year to March 2025 – exposed to a full year of GTF groundings – revenue grew just 4% while operating profit came in at €168 million.
Wizz has always had potential. Its Airbus A321 “neo” aircraft combine over 230 economy seats with modern engine technology, meaning low costs per passenger. Its strength in central and eastern Europe (CEE), where it says it has a 29% share of seats, supports higher growth rates. Bernstein analysts have noted that trips per capita in Poland grew around 45% between 2019 and 2025.
Back in 2024, CEO Jozsef Varadi was still touting a plan called “Wizz 500”, which foresaw an eventual 500-aircraft fleet, with around 450 expected by 2030. He was also talking up opportunities as far afield as India. The group’s 2024 annual report listed one of the company’s “goals” as a 13% to 15% net income margin – effectively harking back to pre-Covid days.
Last Thursday’s plan is better suited to harder times that have seen jet fuel prices up over 115% versus last year’s average, per IATA. Wizz now targets €10 billion in 2030 revenue – roughly what analysts had forecast anyway, per Visible Alpha – an operating margin of 10%, and a 2030 fleet of 335 aircraft, while flagging its CEE focus. Varadi’s plan to increase “unit revenues” rests not on pie-in-the-sky ideas like turning his carrier into a luxury airline, but more on, for example, squeezing more money out of each passenger through slower supply growth.
The good news is that Wizz isn’t the only group clipping its wings: major US carriers like United Airlines are scaling back schedules despite resilient demand, implicitly prioritising margins over growth, and Wizz’s own 5% cut to planned capacity between October and March echoes a similar Ryanair announcement. The bad news is that Wizz’s net debt was still over 4 times EBITDA at end-June – twice the level likely required for its investment-grade goal – and its CEE heartland is right where a future European war might possibly erupt. Still, with shares up over 9% since before the new strategy, compared to a 2% rise for the STOXX Europe Airlines Index as of yesterday’s close, investors seem to welcome the new note of caution.
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CONTEXT NEWS
Wizz Air held a capital markets day and announced medium-term goals on September 17.
The London-listed airline said its targets for the financial year ending March 2030 included revenue of €10 billion, an operating margin of 10%, and an investment-grade balance sheet.
Wizz also said that summer trading had been better than expected, with so-called revenue per available seat kilometre in its second quarter guided to flat year-on-year, versus “down low single digits” previously.
Shares in Wizz rose 3.4% on September 17. They are up around 9% since their close on September 16.

(Editing by George Hay; Production by Varun H K)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on TASLIC/oliver.taslic@thomsonreuters.com))