Member Info for YesIam

So you put bit money in airlines. Worked out well in 2 out of 3 cases. Then what makes airline shares and WIZZ in particular a bad investment for others?

And what airline shares do you have or do you short?

Even Warren Buffet bought airlines shares for the right price though

That XLR will stay in PRG for a while

Lol

What happened to davidkov?

I agree, they still plan to take 15 XLRs and they'd need to find routes for these. India would be the most obvious at least from Eastern Europe. The routes from BUD are also sponsored by the Hungarian gov as there is no direct connection at the moment. Varadi claimed several times that the XLRs meant to connect the furthermost points in their network. Which made more sense until they had stronger presence in the Gulf and Central Asia.

Sorry I meant BOM not BOI

They have the approval from Hungary to fly both BOI and DEL routes from BUD. Not sure about the other countries. If I recall well Italy and Austria also awarded WIZZ to fly Indian routes under the bilateral agreements. WIZZ closing its VIE base though so that's not going to happen but I am positive they will fly from Italy unless they scrap the whole idea of flying to India.

Captain777,

Let's see who is going to be the first one. IndiGO has not received it's first XLR yet. And to fly 6 times a week you would need more than one. WIZZ has only one XLR in EASA reg so far and the plan was to start BUD-BOI this year.

Any shareholders online?

What are you doing in a WIZZ forum then? And how do you know that the others does not hold any other instruments? What you are saying is not wrong but tbh it is true for almost all shares and a lot of industries and a bit pointless on a company specific forum. The aim is to share valuable info with each other so everyone can make a decision whether to buy, hold, sell or whatsoever.

Taut, you mixing up things I guess. Many engines are affected by the P&W issue worldwide. It is a list of certain serial numbers. Not sure how many of the WIZZ NEOs are affected but much more than the average number of grounded AC (times two) would suggest. The reason is that the operator can use the engines until the inspection becomes due (reaching a certain flight time or cycles). Then it goes to the shop. But this does not happens at the same time as the aircraft were delivered at different times and the airline can play with this a bit by the utilization. They might even get some extension on the due date if they perform a boroscope inspection, maybe Lucas knows better. So when the engine inspection is due, they either stop the aircraft and put it into storage or just replace the engines with spares and keep the aircraft in the air. Since WIZZ managed to get 80 spare engines they can keep 40 aircraft in the air instead of putting those as well into storage.

So what matters is how many aircraft is on the ground at the same time and if this number is growing or decreasing. But how long a particular aircraft is grounded is less informative. This would give us clear picture only in case there were no spare engines and each engine would go in shop visit in closed loop. The 33 aircraft that were on the ground in Jan 2024 not necessarily the same as the ones now. Many are back in operation and many were grounded after Jan 2024. It also could be easier for WIZZ to keep the already stored aircraft in storage and rather swap the incoming engines on aircraft being in operation. Savin on other maintenance cost because after storage you need to perform several other tasks on the aircraft not just putting the engines back. So as you see it is a really complex issue and you should not really be bothered how long a certain aircraft is on the ground but rather how many aircraft is on the gorund. For knowing the real average TAT of the shop visits we would need to follow the engine serial numbers not the aircraft tail signs. But this data is not available on websites like FR24. The operator knows it , its maintenance providers and maybe some subscription websites like CAPA have it.

Taut, the 500 days TAT for the recent engines is coming from me and it is based on the fact how long those AC were on the ground. But there is another aspect of this. They have 80 spare engines as well so many aircraft that are affected by this powder metal issue are flying with spare engines and only stopped for the engine swap. Which can be something between a night shift and few days. So the overall average can be different from 500 days and only someone who has access to that data could really confirm.

Lucas, what's the reason for grounding the XLRs? These are flying LGW-Saudi and MXP-Saudi routes at the moment. If it is cheaper to fly regular NEOs on shorter routes (I guess due to lower MTOW and related cost) how they going to fly the Jeddah/Medina routes?

I don't think Wizz having any D checks. Not familiar with their current maintenance program but I would assume C4 will be the biggest check which is not like the D checks in the old times on 20-30 years old AC. Ground time would be like 3-4 weeks assuming no major structural defects. Usually they return their AC to lessors around 12 years and the End of lease check would be similar of a C4 or C3 check (plus some EoL tasks and component replacements). Big structure works are usually happens around 20 years. The longest A320 check I've seen was over 200 days but that had major structure works. Wizz is not operating AC for that long. Hence they ordered so many AC. Off topic but that's why claiming being the greenest airline and flying new AC with less fuel consumption is greenwashing and it is purely a financial decision. If everybody would return their AC at 12Y like WIZZ does all these AC would be scrapped although they are perfectly fine to be operated till 20+ years. So the impact of the environment would be much bigger than simply having a bit older aircraft that burns more fuel by few%.

I am sure the parked AC will be cleared from tasks that are due in the upcoming year but don't think a major maintenance event will be needed since most of the tasks are driven by flight hours and some by flight cycle on the airframe.

This is my opinion only and someone with knowledge in accounting could correct me but their main problem on the cost side is not the C-check itself. Those are needed on every aircraft and part of the normal cost structure. It is either they are havin fix costs that need to be staggered on the entire fleet , causing higher CASK, paying leasing fee on parked aircraft or itt will disrupt the leasing terms. Returning the AC at 12Y while using only for 11 years that is a huge difference.

GTF is a great technology. It has it's issues now but if WIZZ can get over it will be one of the first ones with a fleet of almost nextgen engines only. That will be a huge advantage over the competition. That's the play here. The SP is below 20 GBP and not over 40. And if these are solved it has the potential to skyrocket. At 30+ GBP today with the engine and geopolitical issues WIZZ would not be a good investment. That's why most of us are here. And it makes no sense to question the management's decision over the engine selection. It must have been a combination of tech, expected fuel saving, unit cost and many other factors compared to CFM. But with new technologies you never know. The entire 737MAX fleet was grounded for years due to the MCAS issue. RYR could get over as they had not many that time but it sent norwegian into insolvency.

Sorry for the long post and being off topic a bit.

Lucas

Thanks for the info, keep us updated.

Taut,

Indeed, they claimed 300 days TAT as an average for shop visit which might have been true for the first few aircraft. The ones yet to be released however are on the ground for more than a year so the average is over 500 days. The last 3 aircraft were released after 520 days in average. These are the ones stored and with closed loop shop visits. Wizz purchased 80 spare engines as well so many aircraft keep flying on spare engines and being stopped only for engine swaps with much shorter ground time.

I expect pax numbers to be similar to July and be around +5-6% YoY. We won't see +10% like in Q1 in my view. Two ex-Abu Dhabi NEOs are parked since the beginning of July and two more since beginning of August for the re-registration. In the meantime they took delivery 2 new aircraft in mid July and two in mid august. July-August seems quite similar to me in terms of capacity. Unless there are major increase in load factor or daily utilization there should not be any big surprise. Big question is what's going to happen with the ex Abu Dhabi 321 CEOs from next week. At the last investor call they said they're going to park them until lease returns. If this is the case there will be a temporary drop in capacity in the upcoming months.

Lucky7777,

I created and updating my own list using Flightradar24, Airfleets.net, and planespotters.net. They are quite reliable regarding actual fleet and parkings. I don't have access to more sophisticated data at the moment.

Sorry I meant "ex-WAZ" not "WAH"