The 'low cost' airline Wizz Air has opened two new routes from Lisbon’s Portela airport to Budapest in Hungary and Warsaw in Poland.
"Warsaw and Budapest are two markets that allow greater diversity and connectivity to Lisbon airport," according to a vacuous statement from Portugal’s French owned airports operator ANA.
With the arrival of Wizz Air, Lisbon airport now has 39 scheduled airlines with 118 regular direct destinations.
"The capitals Warsaw and Budapest, ideal for shopping, culture and culinary discoveries, will surely satisfy the Portuguese taste," says ANA, for want of anything sensible to say.
Wizz Air Hungary Airlines Ltd. is a Hungarian low-cost airline with its head office in Budapest.
The airline typically uses secondary airports serving many cities across Europe, and Azerbaijan, Egypt, Israel, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
It has the largest fleet of any Hungarian airline, although it is not a flag carrier, and currently serves 35 countries.
The airline was established in September 2003. The lead investor is Indigo Partners, an American private equity firm specialising in transportation investments.
The first flight was made from Katowice on 19 May 2004, 19 days after Poland and Hungary entered the European Union and the single European aviation market.
The airline carried 250,000 passengers in its first three and a half months, and almost 1.4 million passengers in the first year of operations.
Wizz Air offers a ‘simple service model’, which means ticketless travel, use of cost- and time-efficient secondary airports, single class all-leather seats, no seat assignment and catering on demand for extra payment.
Wizz Air has a young, single type Airbus A320 fleet and all of its 54 aircraft are powered by International Aero Engine’s V-2500 engines.
Calls to the customer service department cost €0.95 per minute, according to Wizz Air's homepage and the company admits to taking up to 30 days to process customer complaint emails.
