Wizz Air: city pair overlap with Ryanair on one third of seats. Opportunities for both; CASK crucial

Wizz Air and Ryanair are Europe's two lowest cost airlines, and most profitable airlines by operating margin. Together with Pegasus they form a small group of European ultra-LCCs. Unlike Pegasus, whose business concentrates on Turkey-Europe and domestic Turkey, both Wizz Air and Ryanair have bases in several countries.

However, while Ryanair is Europe's largest airline by seats, with a pan-European network and 84 bases, Wizz Air focuses on the niche between Central/Eastern Europe and Western Europe. All of Wizz Air's 25 bases are in Central/Eastern Europe, where it is the largest airline and Ryanair is number two. This superiority in CEE is based on Wizz Air's greater share of capacity in most of the larger country markets in the region (but not Poland), while in fact Ryanair is bigger in more (mainly smaller) countries.

In Jul-2016 Wizz Air faces Ryanair competition on 14% of its city pairs, covering 30% of its seats. Moreover, Ryanair is expanding rapidly in CEE, with five new bases this winter, increasing this overlap to around one third of Wizz Air's capacity. For Ryanair, the overlap represents a higher proportion of its CEE capacity, but only a very small share of its total seat numbers.