Budget carrier Wizz Air reported a 16.6 per cent decline in operating profit for its 2026 fiscal year, due to engine issues and repercussions from the Iran war.
The Hungary-based airline said the ongoing conflict in Iran has led to a €50 million drop in earnings after flights to the Middle East were suspended – accounting for approximately five per cent of total seats and 10 per cent of available seat kilometres. Most of this capacity, however, has been redeployed to the carrier’s “core” central and eastern European markets.
Fuel price hikes, meanwhile, have been mostly offset by fuel hedges the carrier established before the conflict, with 84 per cent of its jet fuel requirements for the first half of the next fiscal year already hedged.
Despite this, the carrier said it was unable to provide an outlook for the 2027 fiscal year, given “the lack of visibility across our trading seasons, uncertainty related to the ongoing conflict in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz”.
For the 12 months to 31 March 2026, the carrier reported an 8 per cent uptick in total revenues to €5.69 billion, while operating profit fell to €139.7 million. Overall seat capacity increased 10.5 per cent year on year, while load factor fell by a marginal 0.5 percentage points to 90.9 per cent.
Along with the fallout from the Iran war, the airline attributed its profit decline to higher aircraft maintenance costs. Wizz continues to face groundings of its Airbus SE A320 jets due to Pratt & Whitney engine maintenance issues. As of 5 June, the carrier still had 24 aircraft on the ground, but and to resolve all remaining issues by the end of the 2027 calendar year.
In a statement, Wizz CEO József Váradi said the carrier “will continue to focus on our core markets, restore full fleet utilisation as engine availability improves, maintain discipline in capacity growth and cost control, and further enhance the reliability and quality of our operations.
“In F27, we will continue to invest in our fleet, our people and our commercial capabilities to support the long-term growth of Wizz Air.”
Wizz, which was ranked as the most emissions-efficient airline in 2025, reported spending €56.5 million on alternative aviation fuel during the first year of the EU’s fuel blending mandate. It also increased spending on carbon emission schemes – such as the EU ETS and ICAO’s CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation) – by 27.2 per cent year on year to €273.3 million.