Wizz Air opens first UK base at London Luton

Budget airline Wizz Air will open its first UK base at London Luton Airport on Thursday.

The company will base one of its new Airbus A320 aircraft at the airport, increasing operations to 42 routes from Luton, including three new services to Tel Aviv in Israel, Pristina in Kosovo and Kutaisi in Georgia. The Luton-Kutaisi route will be the only direct connection to Kutaisi in the UK. Frequencies on some of the airline's most popular routes to Romania will also increase with the arrival of the new aircraft. Suceava will run five times a week, Constanta four times and Iasi flights will now operate daily.

Chief corporate officer Owain Jones said: "We are proud to celebrate the opening of the first Wizz base in the United Kingdom at London Luton Airport. Wizz Air's very first flight in 2004 was to London Luton and, since then, we have carried 30 million passengers on our low fare routes from the airport, stimulating the local tourism and aviation industries while strengthening business partnerships between the UK and CEE.

"Our new base operations at London Luton Airport will create a number of local jobs with Wizz and the new destinations added to the network mean even greater choice for Wizz's UK passengers with 42 popular routes to 18 countries operating from London Luton and ever more opportunities to discover Europe on Wizz's low fare routes"