Hungarian no-frills airline WizzAir announced on October 2 it is offering GBP119 (€135) flights for customers of UK budget charter and scheduled carrier Monarch Airlines, which was placed in administration in the early hours of October 2. After it ceased trading, Monarch left up to 110,000 passengers stranded abroad.

The offer follows reports that WizzAir, along with easyJet and Norwegian, is among the potential bidders for Monarch. The airlines are reportedly chiefly willing to acquire at least part of Monarch's short-haul business, including aircraft and slots at British airports.

Buying Monarch Airlines might provide a short-cut for Wizz Air to obtain a UK-based Air Operator's Certificate. It has already been exploring contingency plans that could be activated should there be no agreement between the EU and the UK over flying rights after Brexit.

However, WOOD & Company analysts wrote on October 2 that a takeover of Monarch by Wizz Air was “unlikely”. 

“From Wizz Air's point of view, we believe that a UK licence and time slots at UK airports may be more important than a fleet of old aircraft and a network focused on flights between the UK and Europe holiday destinations,” the analyst note said.

Nonetheless, Wizz Air’s share price on the London Stock Exchange has soared since the news of Monarch’s collapse broke, reaching a high of £2,998 on October 2. The carrier has been listed on the LSE since February 2015.

Monarch is the UK's fifth biggest airline and the country's largest ever to collapse. The BBC reported Monarch chief executive Andrew Swaffield as saying the "root cause" of it going out of business was terrorism in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as the collapse of the market in Turkey. He said the operator had been carrying 14% more passengers than last year - but for £100m less revenue.

Wizz Airʼs first flight took off on May 19, 2004. It now offers over 500 routes from 27 bases in the region. It currently operates flights from two Hungarian bases in Budapest and Debrecen with a total of 12 aircraft.

Last year it carried 3.7mn passengers to and from Hungary, up 23% y/y, exceeding all rival airlines. It announced recently that it is to add 32 weekly flights to its Budapest schedule from the summer of 2018 and increase its seat capacity by 20% to 5.3mn.

Neil Wilson, senior market analyst at ETX Capital, commented on October 3 that Wizz Air’s expansion was "going well". "This is a company with sharp elbows and a growth strategy focussed on less mature markets that is impressing investors," Wilson wrote.