Wizz Air is temporarily withdrawing from the Slovenian market
The low-cost carrier Wizz Air will cease operations in Ljubljana from the beginning of February to the middle of March. Following the suspension of its Charleroi-Ljubljana route last week, the carrier will stop flights on the recently launched London Luton route on 4 February. Wizz Air’s services to the British capital will be resumed at the start of the 2022 summer season, on March 29, while operations in the Belgian city of Charleroi are expected to resume earlier, on March 11, although that may change. This low-cost airline began operations between London and Ljubljana in mid-December 2021, having previously closed flights in 2019. easyJet will continue to connect both cities, with services to Gatwick Airport, but have reduced frequencies to just one per week.
Before Covid-19, London was the busiest route at Ljubljana Airport, as Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted drove all from the Slovenian capital. In 2019, almost 227,000 passengers flew on direct flights between Ljubljana and London, and a further 9,672 passengers departed indirectly via other destinations in Europe. Stansted was the busiest, as 45 percent of all passengers in Ljubljana flew to and from the airport. The route was supplied by easyJet and has since been closed due to the closure of the Stansted air base. Luton was the second busiest London airport in Ljubljana until Wizz Air interrupted the route in 2019.
Appearance of Wizz Air on the London Luton – Ljubljana route
* The service was discontinued in October 2019
Wizz Air is the second airline to temporarily withdraw from the Slovenian market due to the growing number of Covid-19 cases across the continent and declining demand. Brussels Airlines also withdrew earlier this month, while many other carriers, including Lufthansa and Swiss, cut their frequencies. On the other hand, Aeroflot’s subsidiary Rossiya Airlines will start flying once a week from St. Petersburg next week, while Nordwind Airlines is expected to launch flights from Moscow in early February. Ljubljana Airport estimates that it will carry around 900,000 passengers this year, while covid traffic could reach 2025.