The Highs & Lows Of Wizz Air’s Forays Into The Norwegian Market

Hungarian ultra-low-cost carrier Wizz Air is an airline that operates a widespread model of expansion. Indeed, some of its most recent growth has seen it establish a subsidiary as far away as Abu Dhabi, and it also has divisions based in the likes of Malta and the UK. However, it hasn’t succeeded in penetrating every market that it has tried to enter, and Norway proved a particularly difficult endeavor.

Remembering Wizz Air’s entry into the Norwegian internal market

As Simple Flying reported at the time, Wizz Air’s involvement in the Norwegian domestic aviation market began in November 2020 when it launched a base at the country’s Oslo Gardermoen Airport (OSL). From here, it served three domestic routes, and, in doing so, looked to break the near-duopoly that SAS and Norwegian had previously commanded over the country’s diverse internal network.

The destinations for Wizz Air’s Norwegian domestic services were Bergen Flesland Airport (BGO), Tromsø Langnes Airport (TOS), and Trondheim Værnes Airport (TRD). However, the project didn’t get off to the best start, after the purple-liveried ultra-low-cost carrier ran into controversy in Norway regarding its anti-union stance. That being said, it later changed its policy to allow employees to unionize after all.

A short-lived domestic venture

According to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, Wizz Air scheduled 234 Norwegian domestic flights in the final few months of 2020. Of course, this was a time when the industry was struggling to cope with the impacts of the pandemic, so the 43,524 seats and 13,961,904 available seat miles that these services offered represented a promising step. 2021 saw Wizz domestically schedule:

• 748 flights.
• 135,936 seats.
• 45,472,104 available seat miles.

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Today, Wizz Air still serves several different international destinations from a variety of airports situated all over Norway, primarily focusing on the Polish market, where it continues to have a strong presence. However, the carrier didn’t have much luck internally, and it ultimately ended up having to terminate its domestic flights in June 2021, after just seven months. But what exactly went wrong with this venture?

Wizz Air underestimated the Norwegian market

Wizz Air ultimately found that it could not penetrate the Norwegian domestic market due to the greater levels of support offered to local airlines. This led the carrier to refocus its resources, hence the termination of its domestic routes in June 2021. Speaking shortly afterward in an exclusive webinar interview with Simple Flying, Wizz Air’s Chief Commercial Officer, George Michalopoulos, explained that:

“The challenge, and what we underestimated, is how much the system supports the local carriers. At some point, we just realized this is not going to be an equal playing field, we won’t be able to compete on equal terms. We had so many other opportunities knocking on the door that we decided it’d be a better use of capacity to shift that capacity elsewhere.”

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Today, Scandinavian Airlines and Norwegian Air Shuttle continue to dominate Norway’s domestic market. Indeed, Cirium’s data shows that, in 2024, these two carriers (alongside Norwegian Air Shuttle’s regional subsidiary Widerøe) account for almost 205,000 of the just over 212,000 domestic flights that have been scheduled in the country this year. This further shows what a hard market Norway is to crack.

International success

However, one way in which Wizz Air has indeed succeeded in establishing its presence in the Norwegian markets is through its international flights, which serve the country from its other bases elsewhere in Europe. Cirium shows that these services commenced in 2006, and, this year, the budget carrier has scheduled 7,474 flights to and from Norway, offering 1,668,606 seats and 1,098,668,204 ASMs.

Photo: Wizz Air

This marks a considerable increase compared to the 44 round trips that Wizz Air scheduled from Katowice (KTW) to Oslo (OSL) and Sandefjord (TRF) back in 2006. These two destinations remain part of the Hungarian ultra-low-cost carrier’s route portfolio today, with the former set to see 1,452 flights to and from Gdansk (GDN) and Krakow (KRK) in 2024. Meanwhile, the latter has 2,450 flights to and from:

• Bucharest (OTP) with Wizz Air Malta.
• Gdansk.
• Katowice.
• Skopje (SKP).
• Szczecin (SZZ).
• Tirana (TIA) with Wizz Air Malta.
• Warsaw (WAW).

As it happens, Wizz Air Malta isn’t the only one of the Hungarian budget airline’s subsidiaries to serve Norway on an international basis. Indeed, Wizz Air UK has also scheduled 172 flights to and from Norway this year, offering collective grand totals of 40,946 seats and 56,546,426 ASMs. These flights seasonally connect London Luton (LTN) and Tromsø (TOS) to cater to the winter tourism market.

Photo: Wizz Air

Tromsø also sees year-round Wizz Air flights to and from Gdansk, with 157 round trips scheduled in 2024. Elsewhere in the country, other Norwegian airports with international flights scheduled this year include the likes of Ålesund (to Gdansk and Kaunas), Bergen (Gdansk, Katowice, and Kaunas), Haugesund (Gdansk only), Stavanger (Gdansk, Krakow, and Kaunas), and Trondheim (Gdansk only).

Did you ever fly on one of Wizz Air’s Norwegian domestic services? What markets would you like to see the airline expand into next? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments!