How does the prospect of a year of unlimited flights within Europe and as far as the Maldives for a flat fare of £9 per hop sound? Well, if you’re tempted, you have until midnight tonight (Thursday 15 August) to sign up for the Wizz Air “all you can fly” deal in return for a payment of £430 – miss the deadline and the same deal will cost £85 more.
The offer is effectively a standby deal: you can only book your flight 72 hours ahead – and, as you may imagine, a fair number of terms and conditions apply.
I have been wading through the rules and rewards so you didn’t have to.
Is the idea of unlimited standby flights new?
No. They were big in the 1990s, in the US at least. You paid around £300 to Delta or Northwest and flew around America and even Canada on a shoestring for a month. Like the new deal with Wizz Air, it was a standby ticket – but it was also completely free. You would turn up, show your ticket and step on board if there was at least one empty seat.
The Wizz Air “All you can fly” deal is rather different. You pay the upfront fee of €499 (£430) by midnight on 15 August, which works out at £37 per month. From 16 August onwards the fee rises to €599 (£515).
For each flight you book online a maximum of three days ahead, and you must pay a flat fee of £9 for each flight.
Even so, once you’ve made the down payment, £9 per flight sounds an amazing deal?
Yes. The deal extends across almost all the Wizz Air network, which extends far and wide:
- North to Reykjavik in Iceland and Tromso in Norway
- East to Almaty in Kazakhstan and Samarkand in Uzbekistan
- South to Oman and the Maldives
- West to Madeira and the Canary Islands
Reaching some of those is a bit of a stretch: to get from Luton to the Maldives you will need to fly to somewhere in eastern Europe, then to Abu Dhabi and onwards to the Maldives.
Under the scheme you can take up to three flights a day – theoretically over 1,000 in a year.
The £9 fee stays the same as long as you don’t want a pre-assigned seat, any baggage bigger than a small backpack or anything to eat or drink on board. All of those are extras.
Are seats available on every flight?
No – and be warned that even if seats are still on sale to the public there’s no guarantee you will be able to avail of the deal. Wizz Air wants this offer to help it fill seats on flights that the airline knows…
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