Passengers outraged: Wizz Air charged their account without warning

More and more passengers complain about Wizz Air’s latest decision. The Hungarian low-cost airline charged many of its passengers’ Wizz Air accounts without notifying the holders in advance. Therefore, a lot of Wizz account holders lost their credits changeable for flights or money.

No warning beforehand

Zsolt Varga wrote in an article on napi.hu that the account holders had received a short message before the charge: funds expired. However, in contrast to previous cases, the company did not send a warning about the expiration. Therefore, the passengers did not have a chance to spend their money.

Mr Varga asked the airline why its practice had changed and where passengers could turn for legal remedy and compensation. He received an official reply only weeks and multiple notices later.

Wizz Air said that the problem was very complex. Therefore, it needed a long time to review every detail.

Shorter expiration dates

The company decided at the beginning of 2022 that they would shorten the expiration date of some credits changeable for fights or money. Wizz Air states that they sent a warning about that decision to the account holders concerned. However, it might have happened that some email accounts filtered the notifications as spam. Unfortunately, technical issues occurred as well, and some credits vanished from their accounts. However, they have already corrected that mistake, the company highlighted. Complaints can be submitted on their official webpage under the Wizz Account.

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Moreover, despite their best intentions, some credits did not receive notification about the shortened expiration date. They thanked such feedback and said that they started the relevant analysis. 

Wizz Air added that the maximum expiration date of their credits would be uniformly two years for greater transparency.

Wizz Air is optimistic

Világgazdaság reported that Wizz Air

expects 30 and 40 pc more passengers in Q1 and Q2 of the 2023 business year.

The company’s management is optimistic and shared data about their previous business year. They finished 2022 with 27.13 million passengers, which is remarkably good compared to the 10.19 million in 2021. However, their aircraft utilisation stood much lower than the pre-pandemic 90 pc: 78.1 pc.

Although their income increased by 125 pc and they could reduce losses from 183 million EUR to 19 million,

their profit is negative: -642.5 million EUR.

That is lower than they expected before. The reasons behind it are the skyrocketing salaries, the growing capacities and expansions and the fuel price increase. 

CEO József Váradi remained optimistic. They expanded their fleet from 137 to 153 aircraft and aim to maximize utilisation during the summer. Furthermore, their cash flow is significantly high, 1.38 billion EUR which ensures the company’s stability. Therefore, Wizz Air is in the “recommended for investment” category.

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Source: napi.hu, Világgazdaság