Wizz Air Planes To Remain Grounded In 2025

Wizz Air, a budget European carrier, has been one of the most affected airlines following a recent Pratt & Whitney engine crisis.

The crisis has resulted in the mass grounding of many aircraft powered by Geared Turbofan engines or GTFs, thus impacting their A320 family of aircraft.

Those problems, which have led to groundings spurred on by maintenance delays, reliability concerns and supply chain constraints, have meant that Wizz Air has been unable to carry out its operations properly.

As a result, cancellations have been forced to occur alongside adjusted expectations of what growth will look like in the coming years. This has primarily been not optimal, with a lack of growth forecasted thanks to the groundings.

Wizz Air has said that the support from Pratt & Whitney will continue and include operational support but, more importantly, compensation packages, which will cover the airline’s losses.

Compensation is often seen in scenarios such as these as a last resort if difficulties cannot be resolved soon after the problem is first identified.

In the case of the engine crisis, this has been ongoing for well over a year, and thus, an airline like Wizz Air leaves the company at its witts end with patience and is now certainly feeling the adverse effects.

The compensation will allow the airline to cover all the direct costs associated with aircraft that have already been grounded and those that are expected to be grounded in the future.

The fresh agreement between the airline and engine manufacturer is expected to go into 2026 to cover all the related costs that will impact the airline.

Wizz Air Groundings To Continue

Despite a new year arriving, the Pratt & Whitney GTF crisis isn’t expected to go anywhere anytime soon, and the carrier is forecasting groundings to continue.

Many aircraft have already been taken out of service, allowing the airline and engine manufacturers to collaborate on fixes and resolve problematic engines.

Over the upcoming fiscal year, Wizz Air is expecting around 40 aircraft part of its fleet and the A320 family to be grounded due to engine issues.

Aligning with the compensation package that’ll lead into 2026, this highlights how long the expected difficulties will continue as both parties don’t forecast any substantial improvements in 2025.

For each carrier, however, the reactivation of aircraft will come at a different rate, with some airlines affected hoping that 2025 will see signs of improvements, whereas for others, this will not be the case.

Worse still, Wizz Air has said that while things aren’t expected to improve in 2025, the groundings will continue into 2026. However, thanks to the delivery of new planes and the slowly but surely reactivation of grounded planes, they will be able to grow again.

All this provides a complicated environment for the airline in a heavily competitive space where you cannot give a competitor even an inch of risk of losing market share.