Hungarian Wizz Air, the biggest low-cost airline in Central and Eastern Europe, will launch direct flights from Romania’s capital Bucharest to Cluj-Napoca, in Transylvania. The first flight on this route will be on July 22.

The carrier will have six flights per week on this route with ticket prices starting at RON 39 (EUR 8.6), according to a Wizz Air announcement.

Wizz Air thus becomes the third low-cost carrier that launches domestic flights in Romania, after Blue Air opened the Bucharest-Iasi route late last year and Irish Ryanair announced last week that it would launch direct flights from Bucharest to Timisoara, in western Romania.

The domestic flights market has been dominated by state-owned airline Tarom for many years. However, the prices were high and it was a few times cheaper to fly from Bucharest to Rome or London than from Bucharest to any airport in Romania. This has started to change with the low-cost carriers’ entry on this segment. A trip to Cluj-Napoca by plane for RON 39 is now cheaper than by any other means of transport, not to say faster.

Wizz Air also announced on Tuesday that it would launch a direct flight from Bucharest to Hungary’s capital Budapest starting September 19. The company will have four flights a week with prices starting at RON 99 (EUR 22).

The carrier now has 108 routes to 17 countries from the eight airports it operates from in Romania. In 2015, Wizz Air carried 4.5 million passengers to and from Romanian airports, 16% more than in 2014.

editor@romania-insider.com