WARSAW (Reuters) -London-listed low-cost carrier Wizz Air will resume flights from Warsaw Modlin Airport in central Poland after a 13-year hiatus, with plans to deploy two aircraft there from December, operations officer Roland Tischner said on Friday.
Wizz Air said on Monday it was closing down its Abu Dhabi operation, allowing it to relocate capacity throughout Europe.
Tischner told Reuters on Friday that employees in Abu Dhabi would be offered the opportunity to move to Europe.
“There are many of our colleagues who actually moved (there) from Europe … So we are looking into getting them back to our European operation,” he said.
“So we will try to provide opportunity to everyone. And of course it will be the decision of the people whether they want to stay in the Middle East and maybe look for other careers or they want to come back to Europe.”
Tischner said the decision to leave Abu Dhabi was “heavily impacted” by the geopolitical situation in the Middle East.
It would not affect the company’s forecast for a 15-20% increase in passenger numbers in 2025, he added.
MODLIN AIRPORT
The airline had shifted its operations to Warsaw’s Chopin Airport in 2012 after a runway failure at Modlin.
“After successful negotiation and discussion and agreement with the management of Modlin Airport, we are going to deploy two new Airbus neo planes to Modlin airport starting in December,” Tischner said at a conference in Warsaw.
The new routes will serve eight countries and connect Modlin with Athens, Sardinia’s Alghero, Barcelona, Bergamo, Bergen, Brindisi, Chisinau, Malta, Palermo, Paphos and Sofia.
Last week Ryanair announced plans to treble the number of passengers it serves at Modlin airport to more than five million a year by 2030.
(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk. Writing by Pawel Florkiewicz. Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Mark Potter)
