Wizz Air Norway - What went wrong?

Wizz Air are one of the boldest airlines in Europe at present in terms of expansion, starting out in Eastern Europe and serving a 'Visiting Friends and Relatives' market, to expanding in Western Europe and serving leisure-orientated routes. Throughout 2020, Wizz Air decided to try the domestic markets in two countries - Italy and Norway, with mixed results.

COVID has led to travel restrictions across Europe in 2020 and early 2021, however, restricting travel in a single country can be difficult. Furthermore, countries are likely to open up internally before allowing international routes to resume. This led to Wizz Air looking to diversify their network and launch domestic routes from Italy and Norway - 2 of the largest markets in Europe for domestic travel due to their geographic nature of long, slim countries resulting in long travel times.

Over the last 12 months, Wizz Air's Italy operation has grown from strength to strength, with bases in 5 Italian cities and have recently announced new destinations in the country including Olbia and Lampedusa. However, the same cannot be said for its Norway operation.

Wizz Air announced its first base at Oslo Gardermoen on 6 October 2020 for a November 2020 launch - initially with 3 routes - Bergen, Tromso and Trondheim. A second aircraft was added in December 2020 and on 17 December 2020, a second base opened in Trondheim with two aircraft. This led to a rapid expansion of domestic routes in Norway, with new destinations added to the Wizz Air network including Alta, Harstad-Narvik and Kirkenes.

Norway had potential for Wizz Air. The country had suffered through the financial problems of Norwegian Air Shuttle with two carriers having a large dominance of domestic passengers - Scandinavian Airlines and Wideroe. Low cost carriers play a minority role in Norwegian aviation, especially domestically and Wizz saw this as an opportunity to expand and become a market leader.

Yet all this expansion did not come without controversy. In December 2020, especially in terms of unions - or lack of in this case. Norway is a heavy unionised country and has strong labour laws to protect its workforce. The lack of unions at Wizz Air led to many politicians and business leaders to call for a boycott of Wizz Air with even the Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, stating in the Norwegian Parliament, "I will not fly with a company that refuses workers the right to organize."

In February 2021, just two months after launching a base in Trondheim, Wizz Air closed its base and consolidated its aircraft at Oslo Gardermoen. Even with consolidation, the market was not favourable for Wizz Air and last night pulled all domestic Norwegian flights from sale for all dates after 13 June 2021. The timing of this is conspicuous, with Norwegian Air Shuttle's survival confirmed a matter of hours before the flights were pulled off sale and the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority had notified Wizz Air that it wishes to carry out an inspection of the company's Oslo base on 16 June 2021.

With Wizz Air removing all domestic flying from Norway, it leads to a lack of low cost flights in the country. Norwegian Air Shuttle is considerably smaller than pre-COVID, with Scandinavian Airlines and Wideroe having a near duopoly on most domestic routes in the country. These factors lead to Norway having some of the highest domestic flight prices of any country in Europe. Flyr is scheduled to launch in a few weeks time which would add some competition, but the lack of a major low cost carrier on the network could outprice many passengers and lead to poorer connections between many communities.

Wizz Air will continue flying to 11 airports in Norway - but only on international routes. Will Wizz Air return to Norway domestically? Its difficult to say. It is likely that if they wanted to return, a change in policy on unions may be necessary for the airline to succeed.

Photo: https://wizzair.com/en-gb/information-and-services/about-us/press-office/aircraft