The low-cost European carrier Wizz Air is eyeing bum numbingly long flights to India on new ultra-long-range single-aisle aircraft in an all-Economy Class configuration with just 28″ of legroom. Jozsef Varadi, the often-outspoken Hungarian-based carrier who has blasted airlines that offer Business and First-Class seats, is hopeful that by next year the first flights could take off between Europe and India. Presently Wizz Air is in talks with India’s aviation regulator in a bid to win the necessary approvals, targeting to connect as many as six to seven European cities with destinations such as Delhi and Mumbai. The flight times for the new flights would dwarf Wizz Air’s current longest flight between Budapest and Dubai, which clocks in at 2,505 miles and takes around six hours.
Non-stop low-cost flights between Europe and India will only be made possible by the arrival of the new Airbus A321XLR which is an updated version of the A321neo, where Wizz Air already functions but with more fuel tanks and other improvements to raise its range to 4,700 nautical miles. In 2019 for just 20 A321XLR aircraft, Wizz Air placed an initial order, and at the time, the airline confirmed that it planned to cram 239 seats into the 44.5-metre-long fuselage. That’s the same number of seats as Wizz Air has on its A321neo aircraft which operates much shorter flights around Europe but the airline wants to make sure that it is a full fleet commonality so that the XLRs can be used on any route within the Wizz Air network. This will be important because of the initial order, Wizz Air has more than doubled its commitment, with the carrier presently expecting 47 A321XLRs.
Last year, Wizz Air had hoped to take delivery of its first A321XLR but certification and manufacturing issues delayed the project. Spanish flag carrier Iberia is set to become the launch customer of the A321XLR in the coming months, and other airlines will start taking deliveries of the highly anticipated aircraft. From India, there is a huge demand for international flights to Europe. even though traditionally, airlines have focused on competing for passengers by differentiating themselves with the onboard service they offer, mainly considering that Indian passengers can be very discriminating.
Wizz Air will offer a stripped-back, no-frills offering, although at a fractionof the cost of other carriers flying between India andEurope. It’s a proposition that has done them no harm on flights to the Middle East, where customers have snapped up Wizz Air’s bargain basement tickets. As well as offering a cheaper product, Varadi also says that Wizz Air is much further ahead in offering a workable way to fly because the fuel burn per passenger is less when you cram more passengers in a single-cabin configuration on a plane.
