Wizz Air carried nearly 2.48 million passengers in March, over five times its level in the previous year. The central European budget carrier says it boosted its capacity, as measured in available seat-kilometres, by nearly 300% year-on-year, while traffic in revenue passenger-kilometres rose by 440%. Load factor during the month increased by 23.7 percentage points to 86%. Wizz Air last month announced the ongoing expansion of its operations in Romania with plans to add one Airbus A321 each to its bases in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca between July and August. The airline will also add one A321 aircraft to its base in Tirana, Albania, this summer. It also revealed plans for new routes across its network originating from Italy, the UK and the UAE to destinations ranging including Greece, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Montenegro, Israel and Sri Lanka.

EasyJet and British Airways have been forced to cancel a flurry of flights as Covid-related absences hit the UK airlines’ abilities to operate their full schedules. Low-cost carrier EasyJet has cancelled some 222 services in the past three days, including around 60 on 4 April. It attributes this to “higher than usual levels of employee sickness.” It adds that it has sought to offset some of these problems with additional standby crew, but warns that Covid levels made some cancellations inevitable. The roughly 60 pre-emptive cancellations to and from the UK on 4 April represent a small share of the airline’s planned 1,645 flights, it points out. BA has also cancelled some services, but says these amounted to just six flights on 4 April. It adds that during March it took the decision to moderate capacity slightly during April and May as it ramps back up. “Aviation has been one of the industries worst hit by the pandemic and airlines and airports are experiencing the same issues rebuilding their operations while managing the continuing impact of Covid,” states IAG-owned BA. “We are also building a completely new subsidiary at Gatwick while increasing the size of our schedule at Heathrow.”

Norwegian will end the requirement for passengers to wear a face mask onboard across its network from 4 April. The mandatory requirement, which has been in placed since 17 June 2020, will be lifted as a result of revised guidance across Europe, the Scandinavian low-cost carrier says. As countries reduce or completely remove travel restrictions, passengers will now be able to choose if they wish to wear a face mask or not. The requirement for passengers to wear masks was actually lifted by governments across Scandinavia on 12 February, prompting increased passenger demand and bookings for both leisure and business travel, Norwegian notes. It remains confident that travel will “recover and thrive during the summer months ahead.”