Wizz Air UK denies its presence in the UK after a court ruling – UPDATED with their reaction
Wizz Air UK, the offshoot of Wizz Air in Hungary claimed it has no presence in the United Kingdom after a court ruling. The court decided that the airline has to pay for flight cancellations. However, it refused to do so. As it turns out, this is not the first such occasion. The airline did not even reply to the court, so the case had been won by the plaintiff.
Daily Mail reports an interesting case with Wizz Air UK. A passenger sued the company after a flight cancellation which happened with just 3 hours notice. The company did not offer seats on another flight, so the passenger turned to the court as they had to book a flight at a different airline. The court decided in favour of the plaintiff. It awarded a judgment against the airline for about 1,500 pounds (EUR 1,730). The company ignored the claim and said it has no presence in the UK.
Ignoring the court
Ignoring a court decision is very unusual so Tony Hetherington at Daily Mail decided to dig deeper. It was first thought that the bailiffs might have made a mistake, but it turns out they did not. There have been 456 county court judgements against Wizz Air UK. The company only managed to pay 55 of these. There can be two options and one is worse than the other. Wizz Air UK either has no liquidity to pay up or it is just refusing to obey court rulings. Questions were asked, but none of them had been answered properly so far.
No presence in the UK
Wizz Air UK claims it has no presence in the United Kingdom. The company was set up in 2017 as an offshoot of Wizz Air in Hungary. The parent company is Wizz Air Holding, which is seated in Jersey, a UK crown dependency. The shares of the company are being traded on the London Stock Exchange. The bailiffs told the passenger that Wizz Air has no staff, offices or assets in London Luton Airport.
Wizz Air Holdings has 170 Airbus aircraft in total out of which 17 belong to Wizz Air UK. Despite not having any presence in the UK, the airline manages to get publicity in the country. Figures released by the Civil Aviation Authority show that it is the worst airline in terms of departure delays. It also made headlines, when it encouraged its employees to work even fatigued so it does not have to cancel flights.
It will be interesting to see what actions the Civil Aviation Authority will take against Wizz Air UK. The company has been flying in and out of UK airports, operating as a British business, while it also ignored British courts.
Read also Wizz Air joined the elite club of airlines
Here is the official reaction of Wizz Air on the issue
“The claims made in last week’s article about the number of unsettled County Court Judgments are inaccurate. While we regret that there are a number of outstanding claims against our company – and we are working to resolve all of these as quickly as we can – there are nowhere near the numbers being alleged.
Online court records are not up-to-date and present a misleading picture. More than a quarter of the claims shown as outstanding have already been satisfied; another 20 per cent unfortunately never reached us for processing. It is never our policy to ignore court judgments in any jurisdiction we operate in, and all outstanding claims are being dealt with as a priority by our Customer Services team, which is currently working through a backlog of claims caused by pandemic and post-pandemic travel disruption. We will apply to the Courts to ensure that records are updated appropriately.
Wizz Air UK is a registered company in England and a subsidiary of Wizz Air Group. Our UK office is located at London Luton Airport – we would not inform third parties that we have no presence in the UK given that this information is easily accessible online. We are one of the few airlines that has an investment grade balance sheet and have one of the strongest liquidity positions in the industry.
We sincerely apologise to J.F. and C.G. for the delay in receiving their refund. The passengers have now been contacted and their claim will be settled. The refund was initially delayed because the booking was made via an online travel agent which should have received the refund from Wizz Air and passed it on to the passenger. The online travel agency has now made contact with us and we are able to satisfy the claim.”
Source: Dailymail.co.uk
By the way they are doing business you can see that this is a real Hungarian company.
Embroiled in Controversy – the name Hungary, muchly DRIVEN to this position and IMAGE – by a CREED of this present Government, under the ‘Dictatorial “leadership of the current Prime Minister of Hungary – Victor Orban, that is OVERPOWERED with its “perceived” self-importance and – questionable indifferent ways of political conduct and behaviour – that just continues from the present Prime Minister right through this Hungarian Government that is Trashing & Embroiling the name Hungary in continuous and growing – Controversy.
And again it shows clearly that WizzAir is a criminal organisation.
Wizz Air Holdings plc is also the parent company of Wizz Air Hungary Ltd, not just Wizz Air UK Ltd. So it seems that Wizz Air might not have a presence in Hungary either………
WIZZAIR customer service acts as a scam. The website is onerous and confusing and gives no means WIZZAIR can be contacted. There is also no information about a physical address WIZZAIR has a registered office where can be contacted and get a response from in UK. There is never any answer to any queries sent to WIZZAIR contact email address. If you try to call WIZZAIR their phone number is a high cost one with huge waiting time. This is to discourage any customers ever trying to resolve their cases. The phone call invariably ends with no resolution from WIZZAIR.
Last August, while awaiting to embark at the airport(all document control done), the WIZZAIR flight was initially delayed for 1 hour after which was cancelled altogether without any explanation or reason given(i.e. no adverse weather or any airport strikes).
WIZZAIR offered an alternative flight in 3 days time. As I had to attend a wedding the following day I had to find a flight at a huge cost, on the last moment, with another operator. The following day I’ve tried to recover my costs and claim compensation with WIZZAIR with no avail as the company refused to pay anything(not even reimburse the price I’ve paid for the cancelled flight ticket). The website is so dubiously designed that I couldn’t even register my claim. WIZZAIR’s pretext to refuse registering my claim was that the flight was bought through a third party (i.e. Skyscanner) instead directly with them.
I’ve sued WIZZAIR in the UK County Court and won the case with WIZZAIR ordered to pay me compensation. However, it’s been couple of months now since the court order was sent to WIZZAIR and WIZZAIR still refuses to respond or pay. I’ll seek further support from court and ask for a warrant of control.
WIZZAIR employs dodgy tactics to avoid paying all their unsettled claims pretending they’re not registered as a company in UK and don’t have any assets. This proves to be a case of gross fraudulence and probably FCA or other government body will have to take action and remove WIZZAIR’s license to operate and scam people in Britain.