Wizz Air to restart flights between UK and Israel

Wizz Air has announced it is to resume flights between the UK and Israel.

Most carriers suspended flights to Israel in October following the start of the country’s conflict with Hamas.

Wizz Air said on Thursday that it will resume serving the Middle Eastern nation “with routes from Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Krakow, London (and) Rome to Tel Aviv” from the start of March.

The Hungarian airline previously connected the UK and Israel with flights from Gatwick and Luton.

British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and easyJet have not announced plans to resume serving Israel.

Israeli airline El Al has continued flying between the UK and Tel Aviv during the conflict.

Meanwhile, Wizz Air announced a 16% increase in operating losses, from 155.5 million euros (£133 million) between October and December 2022 to 180.4 million euros (£154 million) during the same period last year.

Chief executive Jozsef Varadi said: “At the beginning of the quarter we faced geopolitical crises in Israel and the Middle East and have responded by cancelling affected flights to protect our passengers, employees, assets and general public.

“Despite the associated flight cancellations and redeployment of capacity at short notice, we managed operations well, delivering improved on-time performance and significantly better utilisation year on year.”