Wizz Air CEO Wins CAPA’s Airline Executive Of The Year 2018
The man who has spearheaded the rise of LCC Wizz Air, Jozsef Varadi, was awarded the prestigious Airline Executive of the Year 2018 trophy by CAPA – Centre for Aviation at its Awards for Excellence gala dinner, held alongside its CAPA World Aviation Outlook Summit in Berlin, Germany, in late Nov-2018. Jozsef Varadi was selected “for growing Wizz Air into the largest airline in Central/Eastern Europe.”
Transcript
Jozsef Varadi:Thank you very much. First of all, I really appreciate the, you know, the process and that you selected me. To be honest, I think I really devote this award to my team, 4,000 people who come into the office every day to try to accomplish something and try to make you know, people's lives better and make sure that they can access air travel at an affordable price. I think they really deserve it. You know, interestingly, someone was telling me, a university professor, that Jozsef, the moment you start receiving awards, you need to think about your retirement. But the fact of the matter is that, you know, we have a very exciting history behind us. We are all very proud of our last 15 years, what we achieved. But I also believe that the next 15 years in front of us will be much more exciting, so I'm very motivated to wake up every morning and to see what I can do to deliver that next 15 years. I mean, I don't think we really invented the wheel here. The model was there, the model was implemented in the United States, in Western Europe. We took the model and we reapplied that model in Central and Eastern Europe, but we have been very focused in our execution. We strategized the business in terms of what customer to focus on, what market to focus on, and how to implement the model. And I think that focus has enabled us to be successful structurally. I think Wizz Air should be 3 or 4 times a bigger airline than what it is today. It should be doing largely the same what we are doing today. You know, there is one trend we need to recognize, is that technology is changing the world around us, it's changing the operating platform of an airline. It's changing the interaction with the consumer, and I think we have to adapt ourselves to those changes. But in terms of business as an airline business, I think we should remain very focused as we've been in the past.
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