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Indigo Partners offloads millions in Wizz Air stock
Frontier Airlines majority owner, private equity firm Indigo Partners, is to sell up to $650 million of shares in European based budget carrier Wizz Air.
Wizzz announced a 23% increase in year-on-year passenger numbers to 3.15 million in January.
Indigo Partners currently holds almost 21% in the Eastern Europe-based budget airline.
The sell-off is to comply with Eurozone ownership rules.
Airlines must be more than 50% owned by European Economic Area nationals to operate flights freely within the EU.
The carrier last week lifted its profit guidance for the full year to between €350 million and €355 million after announcing a third-quarter net profit of €21.4 million for the period to the end of December 2019. It made a €21 million lossin the same period of 2018.
Today Wizz revealed that it carried 3.15 million passengers in January, almost 23% more than in January 2018.
The airline, which claims to have a lower carbon footprint than all its rival airlines, cut its CO2 emissions per passenger by just under 1% in January, but overall they were up 21.3% due to its increase in traffic.
Wizz will expand further this year, launching four new routes in Russia in the summer and 18 new routes elsewhere in Europe.
Indigo Partners is fronted by serial budget airline entrepreneur Bill Franke.
It also has major stakes in Volaris and JetSMART.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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