Wizz Air (W6, Budapest) shareholders have voted overwhelmingly, at an extraordinary general meeting held on October 30, in favour of a plan by the airline to acquire 20 long-range twinjets, the LCC said in a statement.
The meeting was held to approve the plan to convert part of an existing order with Airbus. The A321neo(XLR)s, worth almost USD2.6 billion but whose final negotiated price represented a substantial discount from this figure, will enable the carrier to operate routes lasting between seven and eight hours.
The jets, to be configured to carry 239 passengers, take Wizz Air’s outstanding firm orders with the manufacturer to 276 aircraft. The first four will be delivered in 2023, followed by six each in 2024 and 2025, and the final four arriving in 2026.
At the meeting, 55,074,011 votes were cast for the resolution, 524 against, and 148,930 votes withheld.
At the Paris Air Show in June, the US private equity firm Indigo Partners signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for fifty A321neo(XLR)s including the conversion of eighteen existing A321neo family orders plus 32 new orders. Twenty were to be allocated to Wizz Air together with 18 to Frontier Airlines (F9, Denver Int'l) and 12 to JetSMART (JA, Santiago de Chile Int'l), also Indigo companies.
Airline management had argued that Wizz’s ability to expand by reaching beyond its existing network - and to increase its competitive advantage - would be “negatively impacted” if not approved.