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Wizz Air shrugs off Brexit worries as it opens new base at London Luton airport

Published: 07:36 22 Jun 2017 BST

Wizz Air plane
Wizz shares have been flying high this year

Central and Eastern European airline Wizz Air Holdings PLC (LON:WIZZ) has opened its first UK base at London Luton airport.

The move sees the company cosy up to fellow low-cost carrier easyJet PLC (LON:EZJ) which is also based at the airport.

Wizz said it will base one of its new A320 aircraft at the site, which is located just outside the northwest section of the M25, and will increase its Luton operations to 42 routes.

“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,” said chief corporate officer Owain Jones.

Brexit no longer a major concern it seems

The Hungarian firm is seemingly shrugging off pre-Brexit jitters when there were fears that the industry would look to cut the number of routes they operated within the UK.

READ: Brexit worries for Wizz Air

The company said as much in a quarterly update last summer, where it highlighted concerns over the UK leaving the European Union and the subsequent “weakness in fares”.

Wizz wasn’t so pessimistic today though, as it reaffirmed its ‘commitment to the UK’ and to London Luton airport with this “major investment”.

Shares in the airline have soared recently – up more than 35% in the past few months alone – because of rising passenger numbers and a decent set of full-year results which included an upgrade to this year’s forecasts.

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