Wizz Air Reports Massive Loss

Wizz Air reported a massive loss of €241 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, which ended on 31 December 2024.

Many are not surprised by the substantial loss. In recent years, the low-cost European carrier has struggled with many complexities across the business.

Wizz Air blames its poor financial performance on factors such as engine issues that have led to aircraft groundings. Pratt & Whitney is the primary culprit of the engine troubles.

Carrying 15.5 million passengers across the period, Wizz Air saw an increase of 2.6%, with revenues increasing 10.5%, highlighting the additional passengers and other improvements.

However, there were other struggles visible through capacity, which was reduced by 1.7%, visible through the available seat kilometres or ASKs, and also a drop in the available seats highlighted through groundings across the fleet.

Wizz Air, however, said that load factors for the services it ran increased by 3.1 percentage points to 90.3%, a solid result despite the ever-growing challenges.

Despite these figures, the carrier knows it still has a challenging year ahead as it looks to battle engine-related issues that have kept aircraft on the ground and complicated maintenance processes.

Wizz Air continues to attempt to navigate the ongoing challenges; however, this well-documented geared turbofan engine issue affects 20% of its fleet.

While demand increased and there were strong positives in the passengers carried department, Wizz Air executives highlighted how this was difficult to show considering the other related costs and complications across the business.

Wizz Air Problems To Continue

For Wizz Air, difficulties surrounding its A320 family will continue for many years. The budget carrier recently confirmed that it would be forced to keep aircraft grounded throughout 2025; however, that will likely continue until almost 2030.

Fresh comments airing at the beginning of the year at the Airline Economic Conference highlighted the airline’s view that things will not firmly change for another four or five years.

Slowly but surely, the expectation is that pressures will ease a complete revision of the many engine-related issues expected to continue for many more years.

Wizz Air has also confirmed that 40 planes will remain grounded until 2026. However, this will likely continue for a longer duration than most expected.

These problems have become the new normal for the aviation industry, and airlines must find ways to juggle the difficulties to limit the financial and operational impacts.