Review of Wizz Air flight Vienna → Lisbon in Economy

Hello Dear Reader,

This is the report of flight W6 2843 from Vienna - Schwechat Internacional Airport (IATA: VIE - ICAO: LOWW) to Lisbon - Humberto Delgado Internacional Airport (IATA: LIS - ICAO: LPPT) with the low-cost airline Wizz Air Hungary (IATA: W6 - WZZ), in Economy Class.
It was founded in 2003, by an old CEO of Malev (the former flag-ship carrier of Hungary and bankrupt in 2012) and was initially based in Katowice (Poland) and Budapest (Hungary). The airline is being expanding thru Eastern Europe with 27 bases. They have a Wizz Air in Uk and had another in Bulgaria and another in Ukraine (closed in 2015)

Currently Wizz Air Hungary has 111 airplanes: 69 A320s and 42 A321s (including 8 A321 neo) with an average age of 5,9y old. Only 35 airplanes were reported not to be parked/stored.

Its filial in UK (IATA: W9 - ICAO: WUK) has 10 airplanes (3 A320s and 7 A321s), just 1 is in operation and the fleet age is 1,6y on average.

Together they operate for 150 destinations in Europe, North Africa and Middle East.

In 2019, 34,6 million passengers were carried (a 19,6% increase), received more 19 new airplanes, reported a total revenue of 2,3 billion Euros and a profit margin of 12,7%.

Check my video with the full flight report: 

If you want to see the 120 airplanes grounded in Vienna and the effects of this grounding check also my video: 

Departure airport

Wizz Air operates in Terminal 2, but during this Corona crisis, the T2 was closed (not only for the lack of passengers but also to allow construction works to take place), so this flight was operated in terminal 3 at Vienna International Airport. This airport, located 20km east of Vienna, counts with 2 Terminals and 2 runways. There are future expansion plans for a 3rd runway and now construction works are being made to connect both terminals and also include more shops.

Last year, 31,7 million passengers were in VIE and more than 266k movements. During March 2020, had a Decrease of 65.8% in Passenger Volume (compared with Mar/2019), a total of 808.454 and -50% of the flights: 10.479.

As low-cost airline, Wizz Air allows the passengers to make the online check-in for free. To check-in at the airport the passenger should pay an additional charge of 20€. The check-in desks were located between 331 and 338.

Wizz Air was the first airline, based in Vienna, to lift the grounding and start flights to a couple of destinations in Europe. Lauda Motion (owned by Ryanair) will start operations on May/22nd, Level Europe on May/31st and finally Austrian Airlines on Jun/1st.

Wizz Air have already announced they are going to play aggressively and take the routes/passengers from the airlines which are not flying. W6 restarted on May/1st a twice per week operation to Lisbon (every Friday and Monday) until May/15th, from May/18th will fly 3 times per week (Mon, Wed & Fri) and from Jun/1st the daily operation will be resumed. Lauda Motion will do the daily flights (except on Thursday) to Lisbon from May/22nd. TAP Air Portugal announced they will only resume the operation of this route from Jul/1st, with only one daily flight (instead of the 12 weekly flights they previously had).

Due to Corona Virus, both Austrian Airlines and Airport’s Sky Lounges were temporarily closed.

Additionally, every single store/restaurant/cafe at the airport was closed and even the lights of the corridors were off (Including the supermarket Spar, in the arrivals public area, because of the bank holiday.

Also, only the toilets near the gates F01/F03 were opened. 

Boarding

The boarding gate for this flight was the F03, one of the firsts in the terminal 3.

The airplane was positioned the day before (30/Apr/2020 at 13h10) from Debrecen Airport (in Hungary) to Vienna, where it was stored since the grounding. Wizz Air only have A321’s based VIE so decided to bring some smaller airplanes to operate the routes from Vienna.
 
The schedule boarding time was at 14h30 and apart of not many passengers to board, it took a while because some non-EU passengers had no documentation proving they are living in Europe so the boarding was refused for them. Since EU imposed this measures, only passengers with European Passport or a Permanent Residence Visa, are allowed to fly within the Schengen Area. The boarding started with Priority Boarding passengers and families, followed by the rest of the passengers.

 I was the last to board the airplane at 14h50.

Flight

This flight was operated by an Airbus A320-232 (fitted with IAE V-2500 engines), Registration HA-LYP, with 5 years old. This low cost operated this flight in full economy class cabin, with a total capacity for 180 passengers in 30 rows (3-3). Usually you get a random seat during check-in.

There is also the option to choose a seat: 1st row for 24,5€, upfront seats (row 2 to 4) with an extra legroom for 20,5, Front Cabin (row 5 to 11) with prices varying between 17,5€ to 13,5€, the 2 emergency rows for 23,5€, the rear cabin seats from row 14 to 27 for 10€ and the last 3 rows (28 to 30) for 11,5€. The seats also have no reclining function.

 This A320 also had 1 toilet in the front, only for crew, and 2 in the back.

Around 20 passengers were flying on this first flight to Lisbon after easing the Corona Virus Mesures. When I boarded the crew gave me 2 alcohol pads and asked me to take a seat on the emergency exit so I was seated at 13A (An unlucky number for an emergency exit and most of the airlines even have row 13).

The aircraft pushed-back at 15h09 and taxied to the runway 29. The actual departure time was at 15h17, 17 minutes after scheduled departure time (at 15h00).

30 min after departure, they started with the dinning service. On ground, Wizz Air has sent the menu and the duty free shopping offers, because there was no onboard magazine onboard, to contain the Corona Virus’ propagation.

 Only the safety card and the sickness bag were in the seat pocket.  

There were 4 nice crew members on this flight, very happy about flying again and wearing masks & gloves during the entire flight.

They suffered a reduction of the base salary by 15% until Mar/2021.

Also 1h before landing, the crew made a second dinning service and 30 minutes the duty free sales.  

At 17h16 (Lisbon time, less than 1 hour than in Vienna) the descent have started.

The aircraft landed on Runway 21 at Lisbon Airport at 17h41 (less one hour than in Vienna), 1 minute after scheduled arrived (at 17h40).

I taxied to the stand 115 and arrived there after 5 minutes.

Arrival Airport

Lisbon Airport, located in the city and only 5km north of the city center, has 2 departing terminals: T2 for low cost and T1 for all the others. The arrivals are always made at Terminal 1, due to marketing reasons, as the passengers transferred by bus from the airplane have to walk through all the restaurants and duty free stores to get to the exit. Due to reduction of the traffic the T2 is closed. Lisbon has 2 runways, but one of the shortest was deactivated a couple of years ago and now is used as parking position for the grounded airplanes.

Last year, 2019, was the 20th largest airport in Europe & a gateway to South America, carried 31,2 million passengers (7,4% increase compared with 2018) and 217.703 movements (an increase of 1,9%).

The disembark was made by Jet Bridge and this gate, S-15, is straight in front of the way to the luggage claim area. At the exit, the police were checking the temperature via a scanner installed in the selling. 

I left the airport without any restriction at 17h55.

At the public area, all the stores were closed. Outside of the departures entry there were also some construction works going on.

The police was also controlling the traffic outside of the airport area, and were only allowing the cars which were picking passengers to pass through.

Thank you very much for browsing through my flight report,

Fábio Conceição

(Data source: Airfleets.net, Wikipedia.org, Airports and Airline’s Website)