Wizz Air has been named the UK's worst short-haul airline for 2024 for the second year in a row in a recent survey from Which? Jet2 has been named the best short-haul airline again in the survey.
The article for Which? said that while Wizz's prices may appear cheap it could add charges of up to £90 ($114) on passengers who put a small case in an overhead locker on top of their return tickets. The airline is reportedly more likely than other airlines to split up groups that have not opted for paid seat selection. The Which? survey noted that 44% of respondents had reported some kind of problem with the airline.
Wizz Air had been hit with an enforcement action against it by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in June 2023. Following this, the airline repaid around £1.24 million in outstanding expense refunds to which the CAA has been satisfied with. However, despite the improvement, the Which? survey still recommended that Wizz Air was ""best avoided.""
However, the budget airline has hit back at Which? Wizz Air UK managing director Marion Geoffroy said: ""Sample sizes are completely different for every airline - only 124 Wizz Air passengers were surveyed, while Which? spoke to several thousand people who had flown with some of our competitors. Wizz Air UK flew 12.2 million passengers in the last year alone, and the sample from Which? has surveyed less than 0.001% of our customer base.""
The survey was based on the traveller experiences over the past two years from a total of 10,755 respondents to the Which? survey in October 2023.
Geoffroy added: ""The results are most certainly not what we are hearing from our customer surveys. It is unclear how Which? can come to these conclusions when only 1.15% of their respondents said they flew with Wizz Air.""
In particular, the airline was rated one star for its seat comfort and customer service. It received two stars for boarding, cabin environment, cleanliness, food and drink, and value for money. Geoffroy added that the airline is making progress to restoring its image with 67.4% reduction in flight cancellations in the period covering October 2022 to September 2023, along with 90% of refunds being processed within five days.
Geoffroy added: ""We are proud of this progress and are confident that the public's perception will become more reflective of our current performance"".
On the other hand, Jet2 received five stars for its customer service and four stars for the other categories; except cleanliness and food and drink which received three stars.
""So many consecutive years of achieving Which?’s prestigious recommended provider status, on top of being the only UK airline to receive this accolade, demonstrates how we lead the industry when it comes to delivering exceptional customer service,"" said Jet2.com and Jet2holidays CEO Steve Heapy.
While Jet2's headline fares aren't as low in comparison to other budget airlines, it was found to occasionally work out cheaper when factoring in the free cabin bag allowance. Around 80% of respondents said they had no problems at all with their flights on the airline.
Wizz Air named UK's worst short-haul airline in Which? survey
