Tens of thousands of Wizz Air passengers were affected over the summer by the problems faced by the company, and passengers from Romania make up about 20% of the total, Josef Varadi, the airline’s CEO, was quoted as saying by Agerpres on Tuesday.

“We are talking about several tens of thousands of passengers who suffered in the summer. I’m talking at the general level, in the general network. Romania is probably about 20% of this figure,” he said during a press conference.

He specified that compensations for canceled flights this summer amounted to almost 100 million euros, assuring that Wizzair will “properly” compensate passengers affected by the company’s problems.

“You don’t have to worry about that. Of course, we don’t want to cancel, so we are worried about the flights. But if we still have to cancel for one reason or another, we follow European rules and pay passengers all the rights they have,” Varadi said, adding that currently around 70% of compensation claims are processed automatically.

“So even customers can get a refund. They press a button and get paid without any intervention from the company. And in practice, we put a lot of effort into making this process as automated as possible. Of course, there are always more complex compensation claims that require more time to process,” explained the head of Wizz Air.

Wizz Air says it has taken some tough decisions recently

Varadi emphasized that the airline had no canceled flights to Romania last month, noting that there were problems in our country in June and July.

“We’ve made a number of tough decisions because it’s costing us money. We invest in spare aircraft. The spare plane costs 100 million euros. Previously, we had five reserve aircraft in the system. At the beginning of the summer, we reached eight aircraft, that is, for the entire Wizz network, for the entire Wizz system. For this, we invested 300 million euros,” Jozef Varady also said.

“For example, we have a logistics base in Bucharest so that we are as close as possible to the problem. If there is a problem in Romania, let’s not bring spare parts from Poland, because we have a big base in Poland, but we also have spare parts here in Bucharest. We are talking about warehouses, hangars, spare parts,” he added.

He stated that the problems have not completely disappeared, but for now the company no longer faces the situation of June and July.