Blue Air nudges ahead of Wizz Air with 1.71 mln passengers

Roxana Grosu, 1 Feb 2010

Romanian version

After one year as the country’s top low-cost aviation company in Romania, Wizz Air gave up the top rank to its rival Blue Air. With 1.71 million passengers carried and €150 million turnover, Blue Air has narrowly defeated Wizz Air that reported 1.65 million passengers in 2009.

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Blue Air: €150 mln turnover, profit nears zero

The low-cost airline Blue Air said its turnover rose 20% to €140-150 million in 2009, but well short of €170 million estimate.

“We still don’t have the exact profit numbers, but it will surely not exceed few hundreds euro at best”, said Adrian Ionascu (photo), chief executive of Blue Air.

The airline carried 1.7 million passengers last year, with an average load factor of 75%.

According to the chief executive of Blue Air, the airline had at the end of the year a market share of 42-44%. “Last year, we tried to diversify our target segment. Apart from the ethnic traffic, we focused on city-breaks and business segment,” Ionascu added.

The most important category remained the ethnic traffic, as Italy accounts for 40% Blue Air’s flights and Spain for 30%.

In 2009, the aviation company added new routes to its timetable: Constanta – Brussels, Thessaloniki – London, Bucharest – Nice (in the summer timetable, flight to be introduced this year too), from Suceava and Baia Mare to Venice, Vienna and Rome.

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