Wizz Air Shares Gain as December Passenger Numbers Jump

Wizz Air (LON: WIZZ) shares rose 1% in early Monday trading after the airline reported a strong increase in December passenger numbers and highlighted several developments aimed at boosting its Summer 2026 performance. 

The stock is up 11.5% over the past month, though it remains down 9.7% over the past year.

The carrier said it transported 5.85 million passengers in December, up 15.5% from a year earlier, while capacity increased 16.3% to 6.81 million seats. The load factor slipped slightly to 85.9%, down 0.6 percentage points year-on-year.

Wizz Air highlighted four network announcements during the month that will each add a 15th aircraft to its based fleets at Luton, Rome Fiumicino, Tirana and Warsaw-Chopin for the Summer 2026 season, a programme it described as “4 to the power of 15.” 

The airline also expanded its Central and Eastern European footprint, reopening its Targu Mures base in Romania on 15 December and launching its Warsaw-Modlin base on 1 December with two A321neos.

The update noted further progress on distribution, including a new partnership with Kyte to open Wizz Air’s third-party distribution platform to the corporate travel market. This follows an agreement with Travelfusion in August.

Wizz Air also reported a 97% score in its inaugural pre-audit under the EU’s NIS2 cyber-resilience framework, earning a rating of “Compliant with Negligible Risk.”

For the rolling 12 months to December, passenger numbers rose 9.4% to 68.6 million, while capacity increased 9.1%.