Wizz Air has announced plans to reduce its flight schedule at Cardiff Airport (CWL) and will temporarily close its base there during the winter months.

However, the carrier will continue serving the UK airport during the forthcoming winter season, launching two new routes, and has vowed to increase its operations from Cardiff next spring.

From Sept. 19, the ULCC will suspend flights to Alicante (ALC), Corfu (CFU), Heraklion (HER), Faro (FAO), Larnaca (LCA), Lanzarote (ACE), Palma de Mallorca (PMI), Sharm el-Sheikh (SSH), and Tenerife (TFS).

“Though these routes have proved popular through the summer season, it would not be commercially viable to continue to operate them through this coming winter due to the challenging macro-economic environment,” Wizz Air UK MD Marion Geoffroy said. “This leaves us with no option but to pause these routes until next spring.”

Wizz opened a base at Cardiff in April, becoming its fourth in the UK. However, the airline has since closed its base at Doncaster-Sheffield (DSA).

As a consequence of suspending CWL base operations during the winter months, all Cardiff-based employees will be offered redeployment opportunities at other UK airports over the winter.

Despite the closure, Wizz will continue to serve CWL this winter from Milan Malpensa (MXP) and Bucharest ((OTP). Both are new destinations for the carrier from the airport and each will be served 2X-weekly from Oct. 30.

Geoffroy said: “We continue to value our close working relationship with Cardiff Airport and plan to resume base operations at the airport next year. We have already placed our full Cardiff summer schedule on sale on wizzair.com and are introducing two new winter routes.

“It takes time to build up sustainable operations at any base and we are prepared to build up operations at Cardiff over the long term.”

Spencer Birns, CEO of Cardiff Airport, said: "We have seen great demand for travel to and from Wales this year and our teams have been working really hard to ensure our customers have been able to take safe journeys through the airport facilities with minimal disruption.

"We remain confident that the people living in Wales really want to make use of flight services that are cost effective and convenient. Our efforts to work with airlines to deploy more capacity on high demand routes will certainly continue."