How has Wizz dealt with the pandemic?Every crisis is an opportunity, and I think this one is going to sort the winners from the losers. We have good liquidity, we’ve not been begging for government bailouts and we’ve opened 40 new bases and 265 routes over the past eight months.
What’s your business plan?We tend to stimulate the market ourselves rather than fight with other airlines for the same passengers, and we’re organised and focused. You need a strategy to win the game, and ours is to be the lowest-cost producer in the industry. We’re operating to 46 countries, more than any other low-cost carrier in the world. But it doesn’t stop at having the lowest fares; you need to appeal to the consumer too.
What’s your endgame?Pre-Covid we carried 40 million passengers a year. We’re looking at doubling that in the next five years, then doubling again, so 160 million passengers in ten years. We want to be the go-to airline of every country we operate from.
Britain’s unofficial national carrier?Yes, that’s what we’re aiming for.
How bad did it get this year? In April we operated at 3 per cent of our capacity. That was the low point. In August it was 81 per cent and we clearly outperformed the whole industry. In November it was 22 per cent. So it’s been a rollercoaster. But we were pretty clear at the beginning, in March, that we have liquidity for two years.