Temporary Low Cost Travel Cafe

[dvoretzky]

European low-cost carrier Wizzair has added Madrid and Naples to its list of destinations. The new flights will start in spring. Bucharest will open the Madrid route on March 3, and Budapest will be linked to both Western cities on March 29. Additionally, Wizzair will serve a new flight between Bologna and Cluj-Napoca from May 2.

[attitudetravel]

Good find, dvoretzky!

Wizz Air's continuing expansion over the last couple of months has been quite remarkable.

If it wasn't obvious before, it's clear that Wizz Air is fast emerging as a pan-European no-frills airline rather than just a Central and Eastern European low cost carrier with a few Western European routes.

Ryanair and easyJet have a real competitor here.

[attitudetravel]

I note that as well as flying to Madrid from Budapest in Hungary, Wizz Air will also launch flights to the Spanish capital from both Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest in Romania.

It seems the competition is really intensifying right now between low fare carriers racing to establish viable low cost routes between the two newest European Union member states (Romania & Bulgaria) and the Western Mediterranean.

This latest planned route expansion out of Romania from Wizz Air comes soon after the introduction of new low cost routes from the Bulgarian capital Sofia to Madrid and Milan by easyJet, which you pointed out at the end of September, dvoretzky, in this thread:

easyJet to link Sofia and Madrid

In the current economic climate I'm not convinced that as many as ten budget airlines (Ryanair, Blue Air, Click Air, Myair, On Air, Wizz Air, easyJet, germanwings, Volare Web and Sky Europe) can all keep operating low fare routes between Romania and Bulgaria in the east and Italy and Spain in the west.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some consolidation in these relatively new markets in the next twelve months.