(Bloomberg) — Wizz Air Holdings Plc will continue to hold back on hiring because of an engine issue that will idle dozens of aircraft in coming months, saying it now won’t bring on new staff until summer.
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The aircraft groundings are required to inspect and repair Pratt & Whitney engines powering Wizz’s Airbus SE fleet. The work will prevent the budget carrier from growing during the peak season this summer, it said earlier Thursday when it reported quarterly results.
Wizz will resume hiring in about six months, when it will need to expand its employee base to get ready for summer 2025, Chief Executive Officer Jozsef Varadi said in a conference call.
“This is going to probably be a year of hiring, training and inductions of people into the system” starting midyear, Varadi said.
The hiring freeze comes as Wizz would normally be preparing for a growth push in the coming busy season, underscoring the ongoing damage to airlines operating the geared turbofan engines made by Pratt, a unit of RTX Corp. The issue with powder metal coatings has forced Wizz to ground about 45 A321neo jets through March — a factor in Wizz’s November decision to lower its profit outlook, frustrating Varadi’s growth plans.
Wizz currently employs about 8,000 people and will need 12,000 staff in 18 months time, when it expects to recover from engine issues and grow its fleet. The issue had already impacted some hiring plans as Wizz in December said it postponed training for some prospective cabin-crew for several months.
Read More: Wizz Air Puts Future Cabin Crew Hires on Hold Amid Engine Issues
Currently, there’s a slight excess of employees at Wizz, Varadi said, because the company was already starting to scale up capacity for this coming high season when the groundings hit. Wizz has committed to not conducting layoffs.
As a result, Wizz had to hold its growth plan and expects to carry some unproductivity in the workforce until summer, Varadi said.
Earlier on Thursday, Wizz reported results for the third quarter that ended in December. The company said it expected capacity to remain flat year-on-year in the first half of fiscal 2025. The shares were down 1.8% as of 4:38 p.m. in London.
Varadi said this meant Wizz will be flying the same amount of services in 2024 summer as it did in the same period last year.
Low-cost rival EasyJet Plc, also an Airbus operator, uses a different engine choice on its A320-series fleet, and gave an upbeat forecast for summer growth earlier this week.
“Under no circumstances are we be able to ramp up organizational capacity overnight,” Varadi said.
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