Ticket and Flight Details

The best thing about Wizzair is the crazy deals you can sometimes find. This flight only cost £14.49 for the base fare, plus a £15 admin fee plus £15.5 for seat selection. There were two of us flying so the admin fee was £7.5 each making the total price per person at £37.5 per person. Pretty much the cheapest way to fly between London and Rome.

Obviously once you start adding extras things do get a bit more expensive. In fact, if you want both carry on and hold luggage plus seat selection it can often be cheaper flying with a more premium airline like British Airways. But for the base ticket Wizzair (and Ryanair) are pretty much always the cheapest.

One thing I found amusing is that you can also pay extra for ‘Auto Check-in’. At £2.5 per person it’s very cheap, but I still can’t understand why people would add this. The Auto Check-in only actually checks you in 50 hours before the flight. Meanwhile you can check-in manually up to 30 days before the flight. And you still need to enter all your details either way. It really does seem like a feature they try and get people to say yes to without reading too closely.

And as for expensive extras, baggage is definitely something I would avoid when flying Wizzair. A single 20kg bag will cost £70.5 (one way). Then if you want a cabin bag that isn’t tiny you’ll have to pay £52.5 for ‘WIZZ Priority’ which includes a large cabin bag plus Priority Check-in and boarding. So that’s £123 for both checked luggage and a large cabin bag. In other words, more than 5 times the original ticket price.

And thanks to those extortionate baggage prices, not many people decide to bring luggage, as seen by the lack of people queuing at the Wizzair counter. (Either that or they’re incredibly efficient).

London Gatwick Airport

I flew this flight on 25th November 2023, and the Christmas decorations were already out in force. Wizzair operate out of Gatwick’s South Terminal. It’s always been efficient in my experience. I arrived by train and was mildly impressed to see they’ve upgraded the train station. Security was okay too, taking about 10 minutes. And the terminal was super busy, but I didn’t have time to explore as I was running late.

Gatwick definitely isn’t a glamorous airport and definitely feels dated. It’s the UK’s 2nd busiest airport serving almost 50 million passengers a year at its peak. But it mainly serves short haul European flights and leisure travellers so the lounge and shop selection doesn’t compare to other airports of similar size. In fact it serves about the same number of passengers as the vastly superior Doha Hamad Airport (which I’ll soon cover in a Qatar Airways review). Despite that though I do quite like it. Plus it’s my second most visited airport after London Heathrow and I’ve never had any issues.

The Plane & Seat

Our aircraft today was a 2 year old Airbus A321neo registered 9H-WBM. This is by far Wizzair’s most common aircraft with 95 of them in their fleet at the time of writing and a whopping 292 more on order. In fact, once Wizzair have phased out all their older non-neo aircraft their fleet will almost entirely consist of the A321neo, with a few A321XLRs and a handful of A320neos to round out the fleet

Impressively Wizzair manage to fit 239 passengers on their Airbus A321neo. That’s only 5 seats less than the legal limit of 244 seats. That means the seats have a very cramped 28″ of pitch and normal 18″ of width. Pretty much the least amount of legroom you’ll find flying around in Europe. For a bit of comparison, I flew the Vietnam Airlines Airbus A321 from Hanoi to Da Nang (review here) and they only shove 184 passengers on the same aircraft.

The seat is a slightly garish purple leather with pink trim. It also feels pretty low quality compared to other airline’s leather seats I’ve experienced. Comfort-wise it’s fine, marginally better than Ryanair I think. But legroom is terrible. I’m only 5′ 6″ and even I found it a struggle. So if you’re tall try and get an exit row or aisle seat at least. Also the cabin and seats just feel a bit tacky, in line with Wizzair’s budget ethos.

Besides the small legroom everything else is fine. You get a small mesh seatback pouch…

And one of the smallest tray tables I’ve ever seen in a plane. I suppose not many people are ordering meals. Plus the seats are too close together to fit a laptop or something easily so I guess they felt there was no need for a normal sized table?

Everything Else

The cabin crew on this flight were fine. They gave a friendly greeting on boarding but that’s it. Though that’s to be expected with budget airlines too. They did also go through the cabin twice during the flight. Once to sell food and once to sell duty free. Then a final round to collect litter closer to landing.

And as for the food menu, it’s also very average. They have your typical selection of sandwiches and snacks and drinks. Nothing really stood out but the prices are affordable so if you’re hungry then go for it.

The toilet towards the end of the flight wasn’t great. Water and tissue paper on the floor so clearly hadn’t been cleaned in a while. That’s pretty typical for many airlines so I won’t criticise Wizzair too much for that. I recommend you either go at the start of the flight or hold it in.

And lastly, we were lucky with the weather and route and got a fantastic view flying right over central Rome. Not really relevant to the Wizzair Review but definitely a cool bonus. You can see the Vatican below:

Wizzair Review

Overall this flight with Wizzair was surprisingly good. Of course, you have to set your expectations with a budget airline like Wizzair. You’ll only get the absolute basics and will have to pay for any extras. But if, like me, you just get the base fare + seat selection the value is amazing. If I didn’t pay for my seat too the cost would have only been £22.5, which premium airlines just can’t compete with. The downside of budget airlines is the poor service and lack of support if something goes wrong. So I wouldn’t recommend them if you have loads of luggage or want food. And if your flight is delayed or cancelled then good luck getting a refund. But today I was lucky with no issues and we actually arrived early. Now here’s the final score for my Wizzair Review:

More from me…

If you enjoyed my Wizzair Review feel free to check out other related posts I’ve written:

• British Airways Boeing 787 from Hong Kong to London – Avoid Economy Class!
• The Sofitel Luxembourg Review – Chic Business Hotel
• The Plaza Premium Lounge at London Heathrow Terminal 2

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