Flight cancellation: What is the difference between Wizz Air and Ryanair?

Anyone who travels frequently by air will have experienced flight cancellations, perhaps even last-minute ones. Unfortunately, delays and cancellations are more prevalent in the case of low-cost airlines. Hungarian-owned Wizz Air and Irish-owned Ryanair struggle a lot in this regard. What is the difference between the two carriers when a flight is cancelled? What are your options when it comes to rebooking or refunding?

If your flight is cancelled shortly before departure, it makes a big difference how the airline reacts and what it offers you, the passenger. Okosutas has compiled what you need to know about the practices of Wizz Air and Ryanair when a flight is cancelled.

Recently, the two most popular low-cost carriers in the region have been forced to cancel lots of flights. Ryanair has some of its pilots on strike and Wizz Air has to check the engines of some of their aircraft, which is why planes are out of service for longer than planned (check out the list of the cancelled flights for September HERE).

Wizz Air cancellation

Source: @wizzair FB

What re-routing and re-booking options does Wizz Air or Ryanair offer in case of cancellation? With Wizz Air, you can rebook for one month in advance from the original departure date and two weeks back from the original departure date, but only on the same or similar route as the cancelled flight.

What counts as similar is up to them to say, and sometimes the system is quite ambiguous. For example, a cancelled flight to Rhodes could be transferred online to Crete, but the other way round, the system doesn’t offer Rhodes when the Crete flight was changed.

If there is a last minute cancellation, e.g. due to lack of staff or the weather, the same applies. Re-booking is only possible for the same or similar route. Vienna and Debrecen are considered comparable to Budapest in this case.

Ryanair cancellation

Photo: facebook.com/ryanair

In comparison, Ryanair’s system is friendlier when it comes to last-minute cancellations. In such a situation, the Okosutas journalist was offered the possibility to rebook for two days before and after the original flight only, but you can choose any of their flights, not only the same or similar destination as the cancelled one. This way, even if you arrive a long way away, you can save the journey by, for example, taking a longer train ride.

In many countries, this costs pennies if you make do with regional trains and travel together in larger numbers, Okosutas recommends. The best and cheapest systems are in Austria and Germany. What is more, if you’re not going home but are leaving, and you don’t have a fixed destination (and you can cancel your original destination accommodation for free), you can even choose to travel somewhere completely different: for example, to a more distant, more expensive destination.

• Difficult autumn ahead for Wizz Air: many aircraft with engine problems, huge delays
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