The boss of one of Europe’s three biggest budget airlines has said he doubts that airports will run out of fuel – despite repeated warnings from European officials that the Continent’s tanks are running dry.
József Váradi, chief executive of Wizz Air, confirmed prospective passengers are proving hesitant about booking. But he said he was confident that consumers would respond to price stimulation.
Speaking to journalists in London, he said: “I don't think we're going to be running out of fuel. The reason I don't think that is that now jet fuel is $1,500 a metric tonne.
“This is more than twice of what the market was prior to the conflict. That creates a lot of room to become creative. I know for a fact that tankers are going to the United States to pick up jet fuel and bring that to Europe.
"I don't think that everyone is just waiting and seeing what's going to happen: whether we are lucky or not or we're going to go to the church to pray for jet fuel.
“You will see a lot better outcome than what you would end up with if you if you did nothing.”
The leaders of Wizz Air’s two bigger rivals, Ryanair and easyJet, have said they have limited visibility of fuel supplies going into the peak summer season.
Mr Váradi predicted that if fuel shortages began to appear across Europe, the result would be “a mess” and would need to be “micromanaged”.
He said: “This is not going to be like every single European airport is going to be hit at the same minute on the same hour.
“This is going to be like Covid. We were operating to 40 countries and not two countries of the 40 applied the same measures.
“You have to manage the situation location by location as it happens.
“You also know that there are multiple suppliers. Multiple suppliers might be in different positions, so you may not get jet fuel from one guy, but you may get jet fuel from another guy.
He also said that “tankering” could be a solution – aircraft flying to a destination with enough fuel in their tanks for the return leg: “Maybe at one end of the road you don't have jet fuel, but you may backfill it from the other end.”
The European Union penalises this practice, because it increases overall fuel burn, but these rules are expected to be relaxed if shortages appear.
The Wizz Air chief executive said he expected jet fuel would stay at a high price, and predicted: “You will see a flood of capacity taken out of the market in September and October.”
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