Budapest, Hungary — Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air said Monday that it would end its Abu Dhabi operations, which have struggled to turn a profit in the conflict-hit region.
The airline will exit its Abu Dhabi hub starting from September.
The seventh biggest European airlines in terms of daily flights operated around 30 routes in the Middle East, which has been hit by repeated airspace closures since 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel sparking the Gaza war.
“Wizz Air will suspend all locally based flight operations effective 1 September 2025 and intends to exit from the joint venture going forward,” the company said in a statement on X.
Wizz Air Abu Dhabi, a joint venture with the Emirati state-owned Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company, was established in 2020.
The airline said it had been impacted by “engine reliability constraints particularly in hot and harsh environments”, “geopolitical volatility” which caused disruptions and falling consumer demand, and “regulatory barriers.”
Wizz Air — which has had to ground some of its Airbus planes because of problems with their Pratt & Whitney engines — said it will focus on its core central and eastern European markets and selected western European countries.
“This strategic realignment will enable the company to redeploy resources to regions with greater long-term potential for sustainable growth and profitability,” it added.
Wizz Air was founded in 2003 and has lost almost four-fifths of its value on the London Stock Exchange since peaking in March 2021.
Some experts say the airline has deeper problems.
“Overambitious growth has been accompanied by weak fundamentals, with financially strong competitors constantly putting pressure on the indebted Wizz Air with typically very competitive ticket prices,” Gabor Bukta, lead analyst at Concorde Securities, Hungary’s largest non-bank broker, wrote in a recent report.
The airline, which has 231 aircraft and more than 8,000 employees, operated flights in 55 countries and carried 63.4 million passengers a year on 833 routes, according to its latest financial report.
