Wizz Air cuts 5% of its capacity in peak season

Bloomberg

Wizz Air Holdings Plc is cutting 5% of its capacity over the peak summer travel period to reduce the impact of a staffing crisis that’s plaguing the industry.
The low-cost carrier’s reductions, announced in a statement, will add to travel disruptions across Europe after companies including British Airways, KLM and Deutsche Lufthansa AG scrapped flights as demand bounced back
from two years of Covid-related restrictions.
Wizz said it expects to post a “material operational” profit in the quarter ending September following a surge in ticket prices. The carrier’s load factors as of July were over 90%, and it expects higher fleet utilisation to help improve costs, it said.
Shares fell as much as 4.6% in early London trading. The stock has declined about 58% this year.
“This is smaller than the schedule cuts we have seen at many other airlines, which makes sense: Wizz is less exposed to the most congested airports where problems are greatest,” Alex Irving and Clementine Flinois, anaysts at Bernstein, said in a note to clients Monday. Still, lower-than-expected fares in the first quarter “is a question management will need to address,” they wrote.
Wizz said it will report an
operating loss of 285 million euros ($289 million) for the quarter ended June due to
unrealised foreign-exchange losses, disruptions and lower utilisation. Analysts had expected the carrier to report a 187 million euro operating loss. Wizz is due to report earnings on July 27.