Wizz Air CEO: Disappearance of state-owned Romanian airline, a matter of time

It is only a matter of time until state-owned Romanian airline Tarom disappears from the market, the CEO of low-cost airline Wizz Air József Váradi said, Ziarul Financiar reported. Váradi said the airline he is running already has a five-year plan if this happens. He argued that having airline employees organize in unions is not very efficient and gave the example of Tarom to show a company doesn’t do well when this form of organization is used. “Look at Tarom. The pilots maybe are happy there because they are part of a union, but, with all due respect, it is only a matter of time until Tarom disappears from the market. Tarom is the national airline here and has a market share of only 15% but Blue Air, Wizz Air are bigger companies, and Ryanair is starting to be a bigger company in Romania. With a union maybe you win on the short term but you lose on the long term. This is not a problem only in Romania, but globally,” he said, quoted by Ziarul Financiar. Wizz Air is the leader of the air transport market in Romania in terms of traffic. It carried some 6.8 million passengers to and from Romanian airports in 2017, 28% more than in 2016. By comparison, Tarom did not surpass 3 million passengers, recent data shows. The airline changed five general managers in 2017 and estimated losses of RON 206.7 million (EUR 44.9 million) for last year. Wizz Air reaches 6.8 mln passengers in Romania Romanian airline Tarom sells two A310 aircraft (Photo: József Váradi on Twitter) editor@romania-insider.com