Budget carrier Wizz Air’s chief, Jozsef Varadi, insists that the carrier does not feel compelled to use the Airbus A321XLR exclusively on long-haul services, because it still offers strong economic performance on shorter routes.

The carrier has slashed its order backlog for the long-range XLR from 47 to just 11 aircraft, after restructuring its fleet requirements and closing its Middle Eastern airline joint venture Wizz Air Abu Dhabi.

But speaking during the airline’s third-quarter briefing on 29 January, Varadi said he believed there was a “bit of a misconception” about the XLR operation.

“We were saying that the XLR has to be long-haul,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be.”

He says the XLR is still economically superior to the older A321 if deployed on short- and medium-haul flights.

While Varadi acknowledges that the XLR is “a little inferior” to the A321neo, owing to a weight penalty, he says this is “fairly marginal”.

“So we don’t have to force ourselves into long routes or unproductive almost-long-haul operations [with the XLR,” he says.

“You simply just operate the XLR as an A321neo, and you get a lot of the economic benefits of that.”

He says there is “no stress” about using the XLR in the Wizz fleet. The airline has six of the type, three with its Wizz Air UK division and three on the Maltese register, with five more yet to be delivered.

Varadi says the airline does not have to fly all 11 XLRs as XLRs, and “may end up flying only half of them”. The airline has indicated that it is exploring options for the remaining five XLRs in its backlog.

“We don’t have to make stupid decisions just because we have an aircraft called XLR, and we [don’t] have to push ourselves into long routes,” says Varadi.

“Of course, if you find appropriate commercial and financial opportunities to deploy and operate the XLR, as an XLR, we will do that – as we are doing from London Gatwick.”