June 30 (SeeNews) - Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air will allocate a new aircraft to its Romanian fleet and will operate two new routes from Bucharest to Gothenburg in Sweden and to Nice in France starting April 2018.
The new aircraft allocated to Bucharest base will be the fifth Airbus A321 in the Romanian fleet and will create 42 additional direct Romanian jobs with the airline, Wizz Air said in a press release on Thursday.
Along with the newest destinations available from Bucharest, from 2018 the new aircraft will allow Wizz Air to increase the number of weekly flights on the most popular routes from Bucharest to Billund, Geneva, Eindhoven, Paris Beauvais, Tel Aviv, Bari, London Luton and Barcelona.
With the new acquisition, Wizz Air is extending its Bucharest fleet to 10 aircraft, an investment of more than $1 billion (1.14 billion euro) over time.
"Our capacity increase will create a number of new local jobs at Wizz Air as well as in associated industries in the Romanian capital and we expect to see many passengers on board of young fleet on the new exciting routes to Gothenburg and Nice," Wizz Air chief corporate officer Owain Jones said.
Since the beginning of 2017, over 1.58 million passengers travelled on Wizz routes from Bucharest, showing an increase of almost 40% compared to the same period in 2016, supporting over 1,200 local jobs in associated industries.
In March, Wizz Air has launched three new routes from Romania's Cluj-Napoca - to Malta, Larnaca and Stockholm.
In mid-February, Wizz Air said it will increase the frequency of routes from the Romanian cities of Suceava, Constanta and Iasi to London starting June 18.
Wizz Air carried some 5.5 million passengers to and from Romania in 2016, up 23% on the year.
For this year, the airline has already announced the addition of new aircraft bases in Cluj-Napoca and Craiova and the initiation of 15 new routes to and from Romania.
Wizz Air has over 750 employees in Romania and a fleet of 22 aircraft and has carried 30 million passengers on its low-fare routes from Romania, since its very first flight in 2006. The company is currently offering 130 routes to 56 destinations from 10 Romanian airports.
($ = 0.8759 euro)